We are excited to announce that the 2024 Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) Award has been awarded to Jennifer Ellingham, a PhD candidate in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. We had an opportunity to speak with Jennifer about her research, her experience with the Certificate in University Teaching program and her dedication to teaching.
Can you tell us a little bit about your graduate research? What drew you to it, what aspect do you find most interesting?
My research within the Fire Research Group looks at how smoke moves and how that impacts the safety of people within a building. I am also developing a new method that will allow us to collect more data, so that we can validate fire models and, ultimately, make things safer for the general public.
What drew me to this field was essentially networking. I took the 4th- year technical elective that was an introduction to fire safety engineering in my fourth year of undergraduate studies here at Waterloo. At the end of that class, the professor offered the opportunity to stay connected through an email list we could sign up for to get regular updates. Then fast forward a few years, I was working in industry and had just finished up doing my MBA part-time. I was looking to make a change when one of those emails popped into my inbox. So, I reached out to the professor, who is now my supervisor, and that was that. In terms of interest, who wouldn't like setting things on fire and getting paid for it? Actually, even though that is very interesting and always a little bit fun, to me the more interesting thing is making a difference.
What aspects of the CUT program were of greatest benefit to your learning about university teaching? What ideas from the program have you applied in your teaching?
CUT has influenced how I deliver a lecture, how I create course materials, where I post those materials, how and when and what I assess. From a concrete perspective, the last of the modules in the first course for CUT is course design. I pulled everything together in that module and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to implement many of my proposed changes in the classroom. There were certainly some impractical changes that I, as a relatively new TA, didn’t know, so the course instructor gave a little bit of insight in that regard. We changed several things in the course because of that redesign, and I've been making progressive changes since then. I am going to be teaching the course myself for the second time next term, so it's very exciting.
Then, separate from that, the teaching dossier portion of the CUT program has been incredibly helpful because it gave me a huge jumpstart. As I started putting out my applications for teaching positions, the feedback and improvement were a huge help.
Finally, I'd say the research paper where I synthesized a stack of educational research papers about a foot high. All the readings were synthesized into this CUT research paper which ultimately became a peer-reviewed article on lab design in an engineering education journal. It was awesome to be able to pull all these bits and pieces together into one paper.
Can you tell us more about your CUT paper that you titled, “Guide to Backward Laboratory (Re)Design”? This paper was peer reviewed and accepted for presentation at the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) conference in 2023. What was that experience like for you?
It was fantastic! I had the initial frustration when I got the peer review back, but after I had a moment to take a step back, I realized that some of the comments from the reviewers were very insightful. I remember one of the comments was about the taxonomy for learning outcomes in the paper. The reviewer, correctly, challenged that I had spoken only of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning outcomes. That's largely what we cover in the CUT program. They said something like, “Have you ever looked at Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning?” I ended up combining both taxonomies which strengthened the paper. In the end, I was very happy with the peer review, and I now actively consider the Fink’s taxonomy when I'm creating learning outcomes for my classes.
At the conference itself, there was the typical conference experience: you learn a lot, you make a lot of connections, and there's some great networking. But, for me, the biggest part was a feeling of belonging. I was with my community of practice. To be at this conference with hundreds of Engineering instructors who were interested in pedagogy and the best practices in teaching. It was just amazing to be part of that group. I walked in and I was like, “this is my place.”
The CUT team was impressed by various strategies you used to make the courses that you TA’d and taught more inclusive and accessible. Is there any more you can say about that?
Being inclusive is integral to my personal teaching practice. It's also a cornerstone of the research that I do on the teaching side of things, separate from my PhD research. Through my experience teaching, I found that some small, simple things like using a microphone make a big difference to the students, but don't take too much effort from an instructional perspective. I've also found that there are other changes that take huge amounts of time, but don't seem to have too much impact on the students. What I'm hoping to do is share this information because I want it to be easier for instructors to decide which changes are feasible for them to make with the time that they have.
Do you have any future plans related to university teaching that you can talk about?
I will be a sessional instructor again in the Spring term, on top of my PhD research and the accessible teaching study funded by a Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) grant. In the long term, I am hoping to be a teaching professor in engineering, and continue to study pedagogy and stay up to date on the current best practices.
Anything else you would like to share about yourself or your experiences at Waterloo or in the CUT program?
“The CUT program is a huge opportunity for PhD students. I've learned so much, and I would not be the instructor I am today without CUT. I also loved the Instructional Skills Workshop — it was amazing to collaborate with my peers to improve my teaching with that program. Generally, I will continue to take workshops. CTE has a workshop for everything! I always look forward to the beginning of a term when they post all the workshops. I get to go through and know what I am going learn this term. I always enjoy learning and improving and I'm looking forward to continuing that as well.
The Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) program provides a comprehensive teacher development experience that is open to PhD students at the University of Waterloo. Completion of the program is recognized by a certificate issued by Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs and listed on the participant’s transcript. Each year, the Centre for Teaching Excellence and Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs award one recent CUT program graduate in recognition and celebration of effort, reflection, and commitment to teaching development demonstrated during their participation in the program.