Teaching Advancement Grant

PI(s): Karen Karbiener

School: Liberal Studies

Amount Awarded: $2,000

Project Summary: In “Ancient Texts Lab,” students will interpret, make, and explore the influence of 5 global literary masterworks for 3 days each: first, learning to ‘read’ them as historical and aesthetic objects and participating in hands-on workshops; next, discussing text content and considering how knowledge of a text’s materiality contributes to its possible meanings; and investigating how these texts as both art and objects resonate through time and across cultures.

PI(s): Jack Caravanos

School: School of Global Public Health

Amount Awarded: $4,395

Project Summary: Dr. Caravnos plans to develop three VR modules based on high-risk industries including glass or steel manufacturing, lead-acid battery recycling, and a tour of the Gowanus Canal EPA Superfund Cleanup in Brooklyn. Students will be able to explore these sites in 3D format and practice their identification and assessment skills. Dr. Caravnos hopes to introduce IVR educational content to students and public health practitioners to explore its value in their chosen careers.

PI(s): Marija Cahoon, Lillian Moran, and Stefania Willis

School: College of Dentistry

Amount Awarded: $5,000

Project Summary: This project aims to create a complete clinical patient profile library for dental education to improve the transition from the ideal simulation setting to the variable clinical setting. The project will use de-identified existing patient data to create a library that faculty can use to teach real-world decisions in treatment planning. The library will provide a diversity of information that faculty typically do not have access to, ultimately improving knowledge and skill transfer from simulation to clinical settings.

PI(s): Alexander Jones and Marc LeBlanc

School: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

Amount Awarded: $4,000

Project Summary: The Expanding the Ancient World program was launched in response to recent demands for social justice and greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of ancient studies. Dr. Jones proposes to design professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers to enhance their knowledge of the ancient world and teaching strategies. Workshops will be led by graduate students and mentored by faculty members, and will include culturally responsive gallery tours and activities for under-resourced NYC public schools. The program is the only teacher training program dedicated to ancient studies in New York State.

PI(s): Karthik Gunnia

School: Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Amount Awarded: $1,250

Project Summary: Musicians are increasingly writing about experiences with mental health difficulties, such as posttraumatic stress, suicidal ideation, and psychosis. Their vulnerability in song can help listeners to feel less alone and can reduce stigma in discussing mental health issues and accessing treatment. In the course “Mind Playing Tricks on Me: Mental Health in Contemporary Music,” students examine songs from diverse artists and genres to explore how music can provide a unique understanding of mental health issues by emphasizing lived experience and open and honest expression.

PI(s): Clifton Boyd and Sarah Louden

School: College of Arts & Science

Amount Awarded: $6,500

Project Summary: This project aims to address the lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in music theory curricula at NYU, which has been largely determined by white European men and Western classical music. The project plans to overhaul the music theory curricula at Arts & Science and the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development by convening a working group, inviting experts in the field as guest speakers, and hiring graduate students to assist with curriculum development. The goal is to make the curricula more representative of NYU's diverse and global student population and to contribute to national efforts to redefine who music theory serves and how it can inform one's relationship with the music and world around them.

PI(s): Marcela Godoy and Monika Lin

School: NYU Shanghai

Amount Awarded: $5,000

Project Summary: The Natural Materials Studio will serve as a research and educational space for students and faculty at NYU Shanghai. It aims to promote sustainable design practices by exploring the use of natural, found, and recycled materials and to develop biomaterials that result from the cultivation of organisms, making their own, and cooking recipes. The Studio will be committed to offering research assistantships for students and faculty and will serve as a non-hierarchical and inclusive site for discourse, course development, research, and invention.

PI(s): Sonja Molfenter and Celia Stewart

School: Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Amount Awarded: $4,990

Project Summary: Dr. Molfenter's project proposes to provide hands-on simulated classroom activities in voice and swallowing disorder courses with the use of disposable endoscopes and an anatomical head manikin. The goal is to provide a safe environment for students to build skill and confidence in a medically complex skill.

PI(s): Evelyn McVeigh

School: Tisch School of the Arts

Amount Awarded: $7,100

Project Summary: This Workshop project brings together Tisch School of the Arts, Grossman School of Medicine, and media and medical experts to develop Sophia’s Team - a web series about Sophia, a ten-year old girl who has a rare genetic disease, SCN2A. The workshop’s purpose is 1) to serve as a model for a future cross disciplinary course with Tisch School of the Arts and Grossman School of Medicine; 2) to develop videos on other rare diseases which will become a reference for professionals and families alike; and 3) to disseminate the series and sponsor events each year using a new technology: the DAYTool, to update Sophia’s life and progress, to raise awareness of the challenges Sophia, as well as her family, will encounter in dealing with SCN2A over time.

PI(s): Marianne Petit, John Henry Thompson, and Shindy Johnson

School: Tisch School of the Arts

Amount Awarded: $5,000

Project Summary: The Covid-19 Impact Project was created in spring 2020 to investigate the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of color, assess the significance of systemic inequity, and promote repair and resilience. The project examines the role of mourning, ritual, and memorialization in repairing the social fabric of communities after mass death events. The project has been housed at NYU’s ITP program and has engaged students and faculty through coursework, project development, events, and mentoring. Moreover, the project has developed a graduate course, a data visualization dashboard, an ongoing digital memorial, produced a public panel discussion and screening of a documentary, and mentored students in developing an interactive NYC zip code map.

PI(s): Rosalie Kamelhar, Ilona Ben-Moshe, and Ganit Mayer

School: College of Arts & Science

Amount Awarded: $4,750

Project Summary: The use of video material in the second language/foreign language classroom is essential for developing communicative skills and competence. This video project would produce a series of 15–20 short videos that would be presented in incremental levels of difficulty from novice to mid-intermediate levels. The ultimate goal of this project will be to create an e-book which will be comprised of all the videos and exercises offering an amalgam of authentic videos in a high-challenge, high-support environment as well as these more carefully curated videos which will reinforce classroom teaching and inspire students to create.

PI(s): Marci Levine and Robert Glickman

School: NYU College of Dentistry

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Project Summary: NYU Dentistry, in collaboration with NYU IT and other partners, previously designed and developed a VR training simulator for teaching and assessing the delivery of local anesthesia without patient contact. This proposal aims to transform that prototype into a full scale simulation system for students to use throughout their dental education.

PI(s): Elizabeth Coker

School: Tisch School of the Arts

Amount Awarded: $9,713 

Project Summary: This project will transform a survey course called “Research Topics in Movement Science: Sensors Lab” into a hands-on learning experience incorporating portable, affordable movement measurement technologies. During the class, students will be able to gather real-world data, collaborate on an entire research project, and participate in a public-facing movement science conference.

PI(s): Karen Krahulik

School: School of Professional Studies 

Amount Awarded: $5,000 

Project Summary: The NYU-SPS Intersectionality Lab (I-Lab) examines how inclusion, diversity, belonging, equity, and access intersect with teaching and research to enhance the liberal arts and industry-specific disciplines. It is a virtual resource designed by and for NYU faculty that includes modules specifically on inclusive teaching practices and strategies. It also sponsors in-person and hybrid events, curricular conversations, and cross-school collaborations that analyze how inquiries regarding Intersectionality influence how faculty think, teach, and conduct research.

PI(s): Lorel Burns, Matthew Malek, and Franky Min-Wen Fu

School: NYU College of Dentistry 

Amount Awarded: $5,000 

Project Summary: This project will respond to the findings of several research studies which explored dental students' use of YouTube to learn about clinical dental procedures by developing a series of instructional videos essential to achieving competency in clinical Endodontics. Leveraging the use of clinical operating microscopes for video creation, it will address the problem of limited visibility into the root canal system while performing endodontic procedures. The resources should increase student confidence and preparedness prior to treating live patients.

PI(s): Susannah Levi

School: Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Amount Awarded: $5,000

Project Summary: This project aims to add to a critical set of animated visualizations used by educators of acoustics - the physics of sound. These resources created with this grant will be useful for students across many disciplines, and will have wide ranging applications at NYU and beyond for the tens of thousands of students taking courses on the scientific study of sound.

PI(s): Lucas Champollion

School: Graduate School of Arts and Science

Amount Awarded: $4,965.53 

Project Summary: This project will expand and enhance the functionality and usability of the lambda calculator, an existing software program supporting the standard semantics curriculum in semantics. The already widely used lambda calculator will be updated for modern operating systems; to increase reliability and flexibility; to integrate with pedagogical materials under parallel development; and to incorporate features and bug fixes that users have requested over time.

PI(s): Corinne Stokes, Muhammad Umair Bilal, and Maryam Khalifa AlShehhi

School: NYU Abu Dhabi

Amount Awarded: $3,000 

Project Summary: Due to the emphasis on traditional, non-conversational Arabic literacy, would-be dialect learners currently lack guidance for how to begin using Arabic in social, professional, and daily life interactions. This project will build a set of resources for formal or independent study, including instructional videos hosted on an accessible website, which will bridge the Arabic-English divide at NYU Abu Dhabi and provide the entire community with access to learning conversational Emirati Arabic.

PI(s): Natalia Andrievskikh, Chris Edling, and Liz Melleby Welch

School: College of Arts and Sciences Expository Writing Program

Amount Awarded: $2,070

Project Summary: "Animated Learning: Video Mini-Lessons for ELL Writers," aims to create instructional materials to be used in the International Writing Workshop course sequence offered by the NYU Expository Writing Program. The project will generate a set of short video lessons–also available for faculty outside EWP–targeting specific challenges faced by international student writers.

PI(s): Kelseanne Breder

School: NYU College of Nursing 

Amount Awarded: $2,000

Project Summary: This project will leverage students’ cultural backgrounds and voices to generate a robust educational experience and improve learning outcomes. Students will produce creative media around difficult pharmacology concepts–including poems, songs, cartoons, and memes–to reinforce material and help them master concepts. The project will lay the groundwork for future student learning, as well as provide a test case for this pedagogical model.

PI(s): Noelle Molé Liston and Joseph Califf

School: College of Arts and Sciences Expository Writing Program

Amount Awarded: $600

Project Summary: Aimed at first-generation, low-income, and BIPOC students, the First Year Scholars Academy (FYSA) will combine a 2-credit course, “Thinking Across the University” with special events and a symposium series. The program goals include helping students understand how and why scholars create knowledge, serving as a factory tour serving as a factory tour of the university and its disciplinary divisions, creating group cohesion, and breaking down perceived barriers between students and faculty.