Annual Celebrating Teaching Day promotes interaction, dialogue

Despite being the Monday after spring break, this year's Celebrating Teaching Day went well, according to Donna Llewellyn, director of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL).

"I think actually it was one of the best years," Llewellyn said. "We had a lot of communication between the people presenting, so there was a lot of engagement as to people presenting and sharing ideas."

Now in its sixth year, Teaching Day was held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the rotunda and Library West Commons of the library. The day is an opportunity to honor Spring 2004 Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellows, Fall 2004 Class of 1969 Teaching Fellows and 2004 Student and Teacher Enhancement Program (STEP) Fellows, which are funded by the National Science Foundation's GK-12 Program.

The event featured poster presentations from senior and junior faculty as well as students who teach at metro Atlanta high schools as part of STEP. While designed to showcase the efforts of these fellows, Teaching Day also provides a chance for faculty to share what works and what doesn't in terms of teaching methods, as well as see what other people on campus are doing.

"Every day for CETL is celebrating teaching day, but we like to make it public one day a year," Llewellyn said.

Students coming to the library to work or study passed by the exhibits, occasionally stopping to talk with the presenters or find out more about what the posters and projects were about. "We're in the library; they have to see what they're doing whether they want to or not," Llewellyn laughed.

Llewellyn said that the presenters may have gotten more out of the event than the students, though "I hope that we reached some students," she said. Their location in the library also helped draw students who may not have known about Teaching Day to the presenters. "If they saw professors they knew, they stopped and [were like], oh, what are you doing here?" she said.

Teaching fellows such as Michael Elliott, associate professor of City and Regional Planning and Public Policy, presented a case study in environmental policy issues. Jerry Ulrich, associate professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities, played CDs of the chorus singing. "It was nice to see music since it's not always represented as part of Tech," Llewellyn said.

STEP fellows presented posters and multimedia displays: for example, a STEP fellow from Marietta had a presentation on a laser lab. There were a few fun presentations as well. Matthew Baker, an assistant professor in the School of Mathematics, did magic tricks.

"The faculty projects were great this year...they generated a lot of good interest," Llewellyn said.

President Clough also stopped by the event to talk to presenters and students. "The one really nice thing is President Clough always makes the time to come," Llewellyn said.

"I think that shows a commitment from the top of how important teaching is on this campus," something that students don't always think about, she said. "[Clough] spent a good half hour walking around and talking to people at their posters, really finding out what people were doing, and I think that really had an impact on people doing the presenting and the people walking through."