ECE Awarded Grant for New TA Mentoring Program

The ECE Department has been awarded a grant from the Center of Teaching Excellence to start the Lilly-East Peer Mentoring Program, a new Teacher Assistant (TA) initiative. This program will award five TAs a travel grant to attend the Lilly East Conference on College and University Teaching at the University of Delaware. In turn, these TAs will mentor their fellow TAs in the classroom and give them teaching tips based on what they learned at Lilly-East.

By attending the conference, TAs not only will be able to further their own pedagogical knowledge and skills but also offer creative solutions to problems that fellow TAs may be experiencing in the classroom.

Last year, former TAs Peng Xu and Biniyam Taddese attended the Lilly-East Conference.

"All the presenters were excellent teachers," Peng said of the conference. "The way they conveyed their message gave me such a vivid demonstration of what an active learning environment was supposed to be."

"The necessity of questioning the effectiveness of our teaching and learning practices has certainly resonated with me," said Biniyam.

If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, please email Ms. Melanie Miller as soon as possible at MLM@umd.edu.

Published February 18, 2008