Name: Alexandra Hain

Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering

Cohort of JET: 2021

Faulty or Staff: Faculty

Description of Individual Action Plan:

1. What is the specific goal?

Part 1 – Provide a minimum of two events per semester for students, faculty, and staff to come together to improve the sense of community within the CEE department.
Part 2 – Work with the CEE ACT team to develop and launch an anonymous reporting tool for sharing events related to antiracism, equity, and inclusion.

2. How will you measure progress?

Part 1 – Progress will be measured by number of people in attendance, growth in attendance between semesters, and feedback on surveys each year on feelings of community within the department.
Part 2 – The tool was created in Fall 2021 and launched in December 2021. Progress will be measured by the awareness of the tool as measured by surveys in senior design each year and number of students using the tool. Progress will also be measured by the number of instructors incorporating the content (QR link to the tool) in their syllabi in Spring and Fall 2022.

3. What is the timeline for progress?

Part 1 & 2 – Ongoing, monitored on a semesterly basis. First evaluation will be end of Spring 2022 semester.

4. What is the desired outcome or purpose for this goal?

Part 1 – Develop an engrained sense of community in the department where students, faculty, and staff are comfortable sharing their thoughts, concerns and ideas with each other.
Part 2 – Provide a location with clear links to campus reporting resources as well as a space within the department to engage directly with our ACT Team.

5. How did your JET experience shape your teaching style? What did you gain/learn from your participation in JET? Would you recommend it to anyone else?

I would highly recommend the JET to anyone who is looking to make their classroom a more inviting space for all students. It is well known that engineering is not the most diverse group, and while we may be working on this from the numbers side, it is not successful if the students do not have a sense of belonging in the field.

Name: Connie Syharat

Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering

Cohort of JET: 2021

Faculty or Staff: Faculty

Description of Individual Action Plan:

1. What is the specific goal?

Build intersectional collaborations across campus to develop and implement 3 events for the UConn community (including students, staff, and faculty) that support the mental health and wellbeing of neurodivergent students who have multiple marginalized identities (such as students from minoritized racial/ethnic/cultural backgrounds, LGBTQ, women, etc…).

2. How will you measure progress?

Our first effort to meet this goal this past fall had great potential, but we had difficulty with attendance. We believe that in-person events are still difficult to carry out successfully in the COVID era. We will measure progress if a) we start dialogue with potential partners on campus (1-3 potential partners) in the Spring 22 semester, and b) by fall implement a series of 3 events. While we would consider any amount of improvement in attendance to be progress, I would measure success as having an attendance of at least 15-20 per session in a virtual environment.

3. What is the timeline for progress?

The timeline is year 3 of the INCLUDE project (so 2022), with completion by the end of fall 22 semester.

4. What is the desired outcome or purpose for this goal?

The desired outcome is to a) build an intersectional alliance of partners across campus, b) to support the mental health and wellbeing of multiply marginalized neurodivergent students, and c) to push forward a paradigm shift related to how neurodivergent students are perceived.

5. Anything else you wish to add?

Any recommendations for potential contacts or speakers would be greatly appreciated.

6. How did your JET experience shape your teaching style? What did you gain/learn from your participation in JET? Would you recommend it to anyone else?

My current teaching activities are minimal, but I am a co-instructor of a FYE course that we launched as a non-residential learning community called Neurodiversity in Engineering. My participation in the JET gave me additional insights into the needs of students. In particular, I have learned the importance of holding space within the classroom to honor students’ different experiences and feelings. For example, after the many traumatic events that students experienced over the past couple of years (I’m thinking of the many instances of racialized violence), students need time to express their sorrow and fury and need to know that it’s okay for them to feel these things, to express them within the classroom, and also to use these feelings as fuel for their actions to push forward social change. I’ve also learned that while I strongly value diversity, equity, and inclusion, there is much more that I can do and I need to be thinking about it all the time, not just sometimes. For example, I now try to address intersectionality in as much of my work as possible (including my papers for grad school), instead of seeing this as a separate topic. It needs to be addressed everywhere and always. I appreciate that the JET provided a place that was both safe and challenging for all members to push their awareness and level of commitment to this very important topic. I also commend the JET for bringing in staff members to participate and for pushing us all to develop concrete actions to move this forward.

Name: Jennifer Pascal

Department: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Cohort of JET: 2021

Faculty or Staff: Faculty

Description of Individual Action Plan:

1. What is the specific goal?

The overarching goal of my individual action plan was to create a more inclusive classroom environment by providing feedback on assessments instead of numerical grades.

2. How will you measure progress?

I would like to implement my approach again and to survey students. For the current iteration, I have received anecdotal information in the form of emails from students saying they enjoyed the class, that they “felt seen,” and that the approach took the pressure off. I will also compare my current SETs to those of prior iterations of the course.

3. What is the timeline for progress?

This was implemented during Fall 2021.

4. What is the desired outcome or purpose for this goal?

Ultimate outcomes – to promote student agency and choice within the classroom and shift student focus away from numerical grades to learning

5. How did your JET experience shape your teaching style? What did you gain/learn from your participation in JET? Would you recommend it to anyone else?

The JET experience gave me the courage to make a massive change in one of my courses, because of the support of the people in my cohort. It has made me more aware of available resources with respect to inclusive teaching and has connected me with like-minded colleagues within the SoE. I learned about best practices for inclusive teaching and assessment and programs being implemented in other departments. Yes, I would recommend it to others!

Name: Jennifer Steszewski

Department: SOE Undergraduate Programs Advising Team

Cohort of JET: 2021

Faculty or Staff: Staff

Description of Individual Action Plan:

1. What is the specific goal?

To carve out a designated time-frame during advising staff meetings (once per month) to discuss social justice, reflect on our current practice and create one or two measurable goals as a team (i.e. create an advising positionality statement for our website, attending an equity-minded professional development session as a team and reflecting on the session together).

2. How will you measure progress?

Create/tailor a social equity scorecard to assess our progress towards our goals.
Use this scorecard as a reference:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j8xuOCn9I3H68gEIVoDT-WqLt08pF55d/edit

Design prompts/questions to generate discussion and incorporate specific case studies/stories in our social justice closings.

3. What is the timeline for progress?

The ideal timeline is to begin discussion in February 2022, create one or two measurable goals as a team, review and discuss various case studies, and finally, reflect on our progress at the end of the spring 2022 semester.

4. What is the desired outcome or purpose for this goal?

Incorporating social justice closings and setting goals as a team during our staff meetings would allow for more in-depth discussion on our current advising practice and how we can be more equity-minded collectively.

5. How did your JET experience shape your teaching style? What did you gain/learn from your participation in JET? Would you recommend it to anyone else?

JET has shaped the way I view and interact with the students I advise. I have learned the importance of meeting students where they are and the importance of students having opportunities to share experiences with others who they can best relate to.

This group has opened my eyes to various biases (implicit and explicit) and my role in advocating for social justice.

I would definitely recommend this group to anyone else who is interested. They will learn an infinite amount of knowledge and have a great support system within SOE.

Name: Kelly Burke

Department: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Cohort of JET: 2021

Description of Individual Action Plan:

1. What is the specific goal?

Recognizing that students face a variety of pressures and challenges, provide opportunities to complete coursework for undergraduate classes in more flexible manner. The goal focuses on incorporating ways to use specification-based grades and provide opportunities to resubmit coursework to emphasize growth in the discipline rather than focuses on collection of individual points. In addition, I am going to include a weekly vignette that emphasizes real world applications of heat and mass transfer. The goal is to show relevance to everyday life, but the selections will focus on sustainability and highlight how engineering can be used to the idea of “service to communities” because data suggests that this can help with retention of underrepresented students in engineering. The examples also will be highlighting URM in engineering to show that STEM is open to all.

2. How will you measure progress?

Will compare grade distributions between Spring 2021 and Spring 2022 to see any changes in class averages/distributions. Will use formative and summative assessments to track student comfort with material, connections to examples, and stress level (likes/dislikes) over different grading schemes

3. What is the timeline for progress?

To be implemented during the Spring 2022 Semester.

4. What is the desired outcome or purpose for this goal?

My goal is focused on students who are in major in the junior year. The desired outcome are greater connection and relevance of the material, more focus on learning and less on grades, a greater feeling of control and ownership over a student’s learning, and the promoting a sense of belonging for all students in the class.

5. How did your JET experience shape your teaching style? What did you gain/learn from your participation in JET? Would you recommend it to anyone else?

JET reinforced things that I was already thinking about with how courses are run and evaluation of students. This is good because it always helps to hear things multiple times, but I am not sure that it was the best use of so many hours of time. To put it in perspective, faculty are provided this type of info from CETL in many ways (or at least I have). I think this led to fatigue. Because of this, I am not sure that I would recommend the program in its current iteration. My suggestion is to run through this in a semester or through an academic year, not over the summer when many of us are supposed to account for our time in other ways. Other suggestion is to cover the teaching syllabus stuff, but to a lesser extent because CETL already covers quite well. Finally, I am not sure that we really succeeded in a collective action. I do think this is reasonable for the first year of the program, but focusing more on that and keeping in a manageable scope may help with achieving goals. We can’t solve everything right away and I think that was part of the problem with the collective action--it was so big that no one could decide the scope or how to start. Tackling smaller problems may allow more consistent progress that will add up over time. One final suggestion--participants should be able to evaluate this experience so you get other people’s take on this (keeping in mind best practices from CETL etc).

Name: Lara Chiaverini

Department: Computer Science and Engineering

Cohort of JET: 2021

Faculty or Staff: Staff

Description of Individual Action Plan:

SPECIFIC

Creating a comprehensive anti-racist message in all marketing material

Create a portal of information, tools and resources for faculty to conduct an in-depth review of their teaching

MEASUREABLE

% of UGs participating in events created to increase feelings of inclusion

%of Grad students participating in events created to increase feeling of inclusion

# of events aimed at creating social networks for students

% of faculty supporting DEI initiatives through attendance, sharing information, encouraging participation and vocally serving as a student resource

% of students reporting a noticeable shift in CSE culture

%of students reporting their academic experience has improved because of these efforts

ATTAINABLE

Faculty support – participation, acknowledgement, sharing information, using resources presented, communicating the effects and evaluating impact, encourage faculty to access resources provided to look at their teaching practices through an inclusive lens

Student support – participating in events, completing informational surveys, attending DEI committee meetings, utilizing supports offered,

Leadership support – financial backing of DEI initiatives

Funding

RELEVANT

Our students and community need this commitment from our leadership and our faculty. I believe this is a deciding factor when young people are choosing a school to attend.

TIMELY

Ongoing

1. How did your JET experience shape your teaching style? What did you gain/learn from your participation in JET? Would you recommend it to anyone else?

I hope that my participation helps to shape others’ teaching. What I gained from participating was the knowledge to look past myself and my own privilege and positionality to reflect on the way others see the same situation, and what effect this has on their experience. I would recommend this journey to anyone who wishes to see their teaching from a new perspective.

Name: Matthew  Stuber

Department: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Cohort of JET: 2021

Faculty or Staff: Faculty

Description of Individual Action Plan:

1. What is the specific goal?

Modify my syllabus to better reflect student equity

Design a specifications-based grading strategy

Create a new example that incorporates social and environmental justice

2. How will you measure progress?

The creation and modification of materials is substantive and include new additions to my syllabus, a completely new grading scheme, and worked examples for class.

3. What is the timeline for progress?

These activities were largely conducted over the Summer 2021 and implemented for the Fall 2021 course. Evaluation, feedback, and review will occur at the completion of the class.

4. What is the desired outcome or purpose for this goal?

An improvement in student outcomes is expected. The grading policy is expected to reduce “chasing points” and de-risk the learning process. Similarly, this is expected to create a more equitable learning environment.

5. How did your JET experience shape your teaching style? What did you gain/learn from your participation in JET? Would you recommend it to anyone else?

I would absolutely recommend this to all faculty. It helped me open my mind to many different perspectives and personal experiences. I was provided with opportunities to explore diverse ideas as well as discuss timely topics and areas of concern at the University and beyond. Overall, I feel that this experience has contributed towards improving my effectiveness as a teacher scholar at UConn.

Name: Ryan Cooper

Department: Mechanical Engineering

Cohort of JET: 2021

Faculty or Staff: Faculty

Description of Individual Action Plan:

Create inclusive learning community for courses

Record all lectures and share notes

Fall 2021: all lectures live streamed on https://twitch.tv/cooperrc84

Spring 2022: all lectures will be streamed via YouTube streaming (Cooper channel)

Syllabus revision exercise:

Weeks 1-2 of semester, students reflect on why they are in the course

Suggest changes to syllabus

Fall 2021 biggest change: Students were burnt out and fed up with required discussion posts. We revised the syllabus to create a self-assessed participation grade

Week 7: submit current assessment, Cooper connects you to other students if you feel left out or alone

Week 14: submit final grade with reasoning

Provide open access resources to students

Course reading materials and exercises published under Creative Commons License

Students can revise and credit the resources, but use as their own portfolio or examples to share with colleagues and potential employers

Creates ownership of exercises and materials

Create flexible learning environment

The pandemic has students unreasonably stressed and uncertain

I have removed penalties on late submissions

When students request an extension: I ask

How much time do you need?

How can I help with the material

In Fall 2021, I was able to connect with students that felt left out or disconnected from the class.