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Dr. Elizabeth Vogel Taylor
Topic: General Chemistry Innovations in Five-Minute Increments
Group Meeting Date & Time: Monday, September 12, 2011 @ 3:00 pm
Dr. Elizabeth Vogel Taylor received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from MIT in the laboratory of Professor Barbara Imperiali of MIT’s Department of Chemistry. Along with HHMI Professor Catherine Drennan, she has been involved in developing and conducting an expanded TA training program for incoming chemistry graduate student TAs at MIT. This 20-hour TA training program focuses on creating a supportive teaching environment and increasing TAs’ ability to lead successful recitation sections. The program has had incredible success in the quality of undergraduate chemistry education and is now a department-wide program, with plans to provide online instructions for nationwide dissemination. In addition, Dr. Taylor is also involved in other HHMI education initiatives headed by Professor Drennan, such as the “Getting Biologists excited about Chemistry” initiative. Under this initiative, Dr. Taylor and Professor Drennan created over 30 succinct (2-5 minutes) modular in-class examples for MIT’s introductory chemistry course (5.111) that relate basic chemistry concepts covered in general chemistry to biology topics. The goal of these examples is to increase students’ interest in chemistry and illustrate how chemistry plays a fundamental role in everyday biology. In addition to being an instructor and course developer for the introductory chemistry course (5.111), Dr. Taylor is teaching the Graduate Students Teaching Certificate program offered by the Teaching & Learning Lab during the academic year 2011-2012.
