The CIRCLE Fellowship is a faculty-development program supported by the Washington University AAU initiative to improve undergraduate STEM Education. The CIRCLE Fellows program assists faculty in their implementation of active-learning pedagogies that can enhance student engagement and learning. A collaboration between Washington University STEM faculty, The Teaching Center, and the Center for the Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning and Education (CIRCLE), the fellowship is designed to cultivate scholarly teaching that spurs sustainable innovations in the University’s classrooms and curricula.

With the understanding that introductory coursework is crucial in the retention of STEM majors and that active-learning approaches deepen student learning, the first two cohorts of CIRCLE Fellows are faculty who teach the introductory courses in biology (Biology 2960) and chemistry (Chemistry 111).

2015-2017 CIRCLE Fellows:

• Dan Giammar, PhD, Walter E. Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering, Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering
• Mairin Hynes, PhD, Lecturer in Physics
• Jay Turner, PhD, Associate Professor & Director of Undergraduate Programs, Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering

Learn about CIRCLE 2016-2018 Fellow projects.

Learn about CIRCLE 2015-2017 Fellow projects.

2014-2016 CIRCLE Fellows:

• Megan Daschbach, PhD, Lecturer in Chemistry
• Richard Loomis, PhD, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Director of Graduate Studies

2013-2015 CIRCLE Fellows:

• Barbara Kunkel, PhD, Professor of Biology
• John Majors, PhD, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics

These fellows are working with The Teaching Center to develop active-learning approaches in their courses, through the use of student-response systems (i>clickers), which are managed in collaboration with the University Libraries. With proper implementation, which includes well-constructed questions, clickers can increase student participation. Since part of the process of incorporating new pedagogies is assessment, CIRCLE Fellows are also working with Teaching Center staff and CIRCLE researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of integrating clicker questions into large lecture courses.

Recent studies have shown that the implementation of active-learning strategies determines their success. The CIRCLE Fellowship provides a supportive structure for innovation so that faculty can smoothly implement and integrate new active-learning strategies as well as evaluate their impact on student engagement and learning. Teaching Center expertise on best teaching practices helps faculty to take creative leaps in their pedagogical approaches and make successful changes to their courses, even in the midst of busy semesters.

In designing, implementing, and evaluating their classroom innovations, CIRCLE Fellows work closely with staff at CIRCLE and The Teaching Center.

The CIRCLE fellowship is a two-year commitment that brings in a new class of fellows each year. This structure expands the learning community and fosters conversation about teaching and learning across the STEM disciplines. Each fellow receives a modest stipend for developing their teaching innovations and participating in the learning community over the two years of the project.

2014-2016 CIRCLE Fellow Richard Loomis offers his thoughts on how the program has been invigorating the teaching culture of the University:

With this program, we are finally getting the faculty to talk about teaching. Ten years ago, nobody was discussing teaching, and now we have a conversation going on—not only in the [Chemistry] Department, but across departments and even between universities!

2013-2015 CIRCLE Fellow Barbara Kunkel remarks on how supportive she has found the CIRCLE Fellowship to be for her process of incorporating innovations into her teaching:

It is great to have established an ongoing working relationship with Gina Frey and Denise Leonard of The Teaching Center, whose encouragement and experience in both the sciences and in teaching are helping me refine my teaching approach. We have developed a set of objectives for my course that we discuss at regular meetings. This allows us to discuss in depth some of the challenging aspects of teaching a large lecture class on a regular basis, and for Denise and Gina to give me suggestions that I try to incorporate into my lectures during the following weeks. What is most helpful is to then discuss the outcome of incorporating these changes at our next meeting. The conversational approach of the CIRCLE Fellowship has made implementing new changes to my course much less daunting.

While the CIRCLE Fellowship is focused on introductory STEM courses, its robust support structure for spurring and sustaining curricular innovation makes it a useful pilot program for similar faculty development initiatives in other disciplines across the University.