For a third year, the McGraw Center awarded Inclusive Pedagogy Grants to faculty in support of the revision of an element of an existing undergraduate course to more strongly reflect equitable and inclusive teaching practices.  

Several faculty awarded the grant were inspired by Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy’s book Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom and the authors’ on-campus workshop this spring. Yael Niv, Professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Psychology, will use the grant to build on the inclusive practices and alternative grading methods already in place in Computational Psychiatry (NEU/PSY443). Her proposal cites Hogan and Sathy’s claim that adding structure to a course can encourage broader student participation and foster feelings of inclusion. To that end, Niv will increase the structure of class discussions, explicitly calling attention to the facilitation techniques she uses. Students will then practice these techniques themselves during their class presentations. Grace Bosse, Senior Lecturer in Physics, will create supplemental videos, worksheets, and quizzes on the language of vectors, which Bosse argues is part of the “hidden curriculum” of General Physics (PHY 103/104). (Hogan and Sathy define the “hidden curriculum” as “all the unwritten rules and expectations that you’re supposed to know but none of us have been taught.”) According to Bosse, the resources will help the 300 first-year students who take the course each year “to better tackle the physics problems they encounter in the foundational class.” Similarly, to help students to understand derivations of key material using specific course nomenclature, Celeste Nelson will add recorded lectures to Mass, Momentum, and Energy Transport (CBE 341). Nelson, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Wilke Family Professor in Bioengineering, already uses a number of inclusive strategies in the course–a prerequisite for the other core courses in the department’s curriculum–including fill-in-the-blank lecture notes, hands-on demonstrations, and real-world examples. She plans to evaluate the effect of the videos on attendance and test scores.

Two proposals will support changes to Princeton Writing Program’s first-year writing seminars. Lecturer LC Santangelo will use the digital tool Twine to create a brief, low-stakes computer game that “immers[es] users in the decisions necessary and setbacks common in the writing and research process.” Santangelo hopes that the addition of the game to Assigned at Birth (WRI 151/152) will “normalize some of the challenges inherent in first year writing—challenges that can have a disproportionate effect on students who already suspect that they don’t belong here.” Shaofei Lu, also a lecturer in PWP, will work with McGraw’s Digital Learning and Design Team to create a welcome video for students in The Politics of Agency (WRI 131/132). She will also design a comic book that helps students to better understand the Writing Lexicon that is employed in all of the writing seminars.

 Other proposals imagine collaborative assignments that foster community. In order to encourage deeper engagement with the course materials and create an intellectual community within the classroom, Assistant Professor of African American Studies Reena Goldthree will implement the social annotation tool Hypothesis in Modern Caribbean History (AAS 313). Fang-Yen Hsieh, a lecturer in Chinese language, will design a group project for Intermediate Chinese I (CHI 105) in which students will create travel brochures for an imagined audience of Chinese tourists. The project will help students “broaden their cultural horizons by researching and presenting information about cities worldwide, promoting a deeper understanding of global diversity.” Hsieh also hopes that the project will help students “to cultivate empathy and develop the ability to view the world from alternative perspectives.”

 Finally, Sigrid Adriaenssens, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will use the grant to create what she calls “a DEI tour of campus” in Mechanics of Solids (CEE 205), the required gateway course for students majoring in CEE. The guided tour of Princeton’s architecture will emphasize the diversity of the engineering field and highlight how Princeton’s buildings are designed for accessibility. With McGraw’s help, Adriaenssens plans to assess how the tour affects student perceptions of the fields of architecture and engineering via a survey administered at the semester’s end.