Educational Practices

The Helmsley Charitable Trust supports four Helmsley Postdoctoral Teaching Scholars at Yale University, two in physics and two in math. The Helmsley Scholars pioneer innovative teaching approaches in their respective Yale departments as well as at area partner institutions, employing the use of instructional technology and evidence-based teaching methods shown to increase student persistence in STEM.

Led by Yale’s Shizuo Kakutani Lecturer in math, James Rolf, Online Experiences for Yale Scholars (ONEXYS) provides a cohort of incoming Yale students with the opportunity to prepare for the rigors of quantitative study at Yale before arriving on campus in the fall.

The Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching work to transform STEM education through evidence-based practice. At regional Summer Institutes, college and university faculty, instructional staff, and future faculty develop teaching skills at multi-day workshops. Workshop topics focus on current research, active learning, assessment, and inclusive teaching provide to create a forum to share ideas and develop innovative instructional materials designed for implementation at home campuses.

Freshman Scholars at Yale (FSY) provides a cohort of incoming first-year students with the opportunity to engage early-on in the Yale experience by living and studying on campus for five weeks in the summer. At no cost to the students, Freshman Scholars participate in activities, coursework, seminars, and trips designed to facilitate and enhance their transition to Yale.

The Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory course introduces undergraduates to research by providing them an opportunity to discover novel microorganisms in the Amazonian rainforest and screen them for natural products with applications for human health and the environment. The students learn about biodiversity, the process of scientific inquiry, and the open-ended possibilities available for scientific investigation.

As a direct result of the AAU STEM Initiative, we have implemented numerous professional development activities for our faculty. Professional development is being implemented in a multi-pronged fashion, and includes observation and feedback for faculty, and multiple professional development activities including multi-day summer institutes, a mentoring program, a community of practice, and a speaker series.

The primary focus is to implement and evaluate our multiple-strategy approach for incorporating active learning into lower-level STEM courses. The multiple-strategies approach allows instructors flexibility in integrating active learning into a framework that meshes with their approach to teaching and with the demands of their discipline and the academic department with which the instructor is affiliated.

UVA's upper level Biochemistry Laboratory course has been designed to ensure that all students graduating from the Chemistry department with a Biochemistry specialization have had research experience.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's (UW-Madison) Delta Program in Research, Teaching, and Learning promotes professional development in teaching for graduate students and post-docs so that they can successfully implement and advance effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences as part of their careers.

First-Year Interest Groups (FIGs) are designed to help first-year students make the transition to UW-Madison, both academically and socially. A FIG is a "learning community" of about 20 students with similar interests who are enrolled in a cluster of classes together.