Category: GRAD 5104

To Teach is to Learn

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
Teaching in the traditional sense has been viewed as a one way street of knowledge transfer from teacher to student. In some cases, students have been so conditioned to be absorbers of knowledge and not active contributors of it. On the other hand, we encourage students to help their peers because if they know how to explain the concept to someone else then 1) they fully understand the concept and 2) they're learning the concepts better as well. So why don't we think the same for the teacher-student relationship? In the three semesters I've taught freshmen I've learned just as...Read More

Into the Future

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
On Friday, November 18th I had the pleasure to visit the White House to be apart of a conversation on "Advancing Postsecondary Diversity and Inclusion". This was an all day event that included university reps from students to presidents, and staff of the department of education. I found out about the opportunity through my involvement with the National Society of Black Engineers and it was a great opportunity for the NSBE members in attendance as well as the other students who I met and quickly bonded with during the convening. The day started out with three panel sessions: Leadership Reflections:...Read More

Open Access

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
Open access journals are sort of a bittersweet reality. While they're very sweet for the reader, sometimes they're bitter for the author who has to pay a publishing fee to offset the cost for users. Depending on your discipline this could have a pretty hefty price tag. The Clute Institute has various open access journals for various disciplines. One journal article that I found was the "Freshman Engineering Students At-Risk Of Non-Matriculation: Self-Efficacy For Academic Learning" by Ernst, Bowen, and Williams all from Virginia Tech. As I read through this article and the others published on the American Journal of Engineering Education I...Read More

The Minority Report

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
Throughout my entire higher education career I have prided myself on being an African American, a female, and an engineer. As my classes became less and less diverse with people who could meet me at any intersection of my identity, I began to feel even more empowered. The fact that I was the only one, or one of few made me realize that the work that I was doing was not in vain, and that I should continue to push forward toward my goal of being a full time engineering faculty member. There were only two faculty members who looked...Read More

The Social Classroom

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
As an undergraduate student my time in Chemistry was mainly spent on Twitter because aside from the clicker questions taking place in class, I knew that there was no amount of attention I could pay that would help me understand the concepts that went right over my head. It was at that moment when I said "If I ever became a teacher I would use Twitter as a means of getting students involved." Well at that time I didn't realize that I'd be on the pathway to becoming a professor nor did I realize that there were actual professors who...Read More