Itzel Marquez, School of Engineering and Technology
In my first semester at CMU, I taught a class called Introduction to Engineering, which was exciting because I had the opportunity to show our first semester students what they would be doing if they chose Environmental Engineering as their career path.
The format of the class utilized project-based learning. For one week, we would go over theory and concepts that the students would then apply in a project by the end of the week. I was excited about the projects I wanted to do and what concepts I wanted to share with the students to grasp environmental engineering.
At the time, I attended the signature series hosted by the Office of Curriculum & Instructional Support (CIS), The Five Students You Meet in Class. One of the workshops in the series, “The Under Prepared Student,” was a game-changer for me.
The session provided tools instructors should consider using to support students from very disadvantaged backgrounds. Furthermore, CIS not only gave me the tools to connect with marginalized learners, but they helped me implement these strategies my way and at my pace within the project-based framework I was already using in the class.
With their help, I was able to identify, support, and provide the disadvantaged students with the resources they needed to be successful in my class. After that, I started implementing these tools and strategies in the rest of my classes. And of, course I had the support of CIS to organize my Blackboard shells and generate an intuitive layout.