Instructor Stories

Sandra Penny at Russell Sage College. SCI-104: Physical and Earth Sciences is a general-education course open to all majors at Russell Sage College. It is a required course for education majors and more than half of the students are early childhood education majors. In this TIDeS course, we really push the limits on what can be accomplished in a traditional classroom in a good way. Students get used to completing mini-labs and activities virtually every day and lecture/class discussion are used just for introduction and wrap-up/synthesis.

Natalie Bursztyn at University of Montana-Missoula. Geo 224: Physics and Geoscience is a 5-credit, semester-long course that meets the physical science general education requirement. Students taking this course are education majors pursuing the Teacher Education Program, most with elementary education as their area of emphasis. Most students taking these courses do not have aspirations of teaching science and/or have fears of having to teach science in their classroom.