Recognized for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
Assistant Professor Thad Domina was recognized for "Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching" during the 18th Annual Celebration of Teaching, held at the UC Irvine Student Center Doheney Beach Room on May 26.
Sponsored by the UCI Division of Undergraduate Education in conjunction with the Council on Student Experience; Graduate Division, Web Technologies; and the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center (TLTC), the event honored outstanding faculty, lecturer, and pedagogical fellows.
Dean Sharon Salinger, Division of Undergraduate Education, opened the afternoon ceremonies. Following remarks by UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake, Dr. Salinger returned to served as Mistress of Ceremonies for the teaching honors. During the program Department of Education Chair Deborah Lowe Vandell presented Dr. Domina with his award.
Text of Professor Vandell's Presentation
I am pleased to recognize Assistant Professor Thurston Domina as the Department of Education’s honoree for excellence in undergraduate teaching.
In his four years at UCI, Dr. Domina has lead an effort to revamp Education 50, “Origins, Purposes, and Central Issues in K-12 Education,” the gateway course to the Education minor for many undergraduates. Dr. Domina has focused this keystone course around educational inequality in the United States, the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, and other efforts to reform American schools and narrow educational inequalities. In course evaluations, students praise the course’s “relevance to the ‘now’ issues”; and the way the course requires them to “think about how our educational system and how the government works.” In conjunction with other course instructors, Dr. Domina increased the rigor of this course considerably, adding regular writing assignments, a structured research assignment, and carefully organized group presentations to the syllabus. In the Winter 2011 quarter, students rated the course somewhat more challenging than other similar courses.
Even as the course has become more challenging, it has also become increasingly popular. In the last four years enrollments in Dr. Domina section of Education 50 have grown from 40 students per class to nearly 70 and student evaluations have remained consistently high. In an effort to adapt the course for higher enrollments, Dr. Domina has helped to develop a “peer assistant” program in the Department of Education, in which undergraduates who excelled in the course in prior quarters serve as mentors to students currently enrolled in the course. These peer assistants help facilitate smaller group work and discussion in the context of the larger lecture class and have proven a very useful tool for keeping students engaged in course materials. As one student remarked in course evaluations: “The greatest strength of the course is that there was a lot of group interaction among peers, which is something that does not really happen at UCI, and Professor Domina likes to listen to feedback from the students to see if they understand the material.”
In addition, Dr. Domina has revived the department’s “Foundations of Education” course. Enrollments in this course, which is designed to provide students with a broad background in the philosophical, historical, sociological, economic, psychological, and political underpinnings of American education, have more than doubled over the last four years.
Dr. Domina also excels at advising undergraduates outside of the classroom. In the past four years, he has advised nearly 20 students in the peer assistant program. Serving as a peer assistant is an unusual educational opportunity for these students, allowing them to view the undergraduate classroom from an instructor’s perspective. Several of Dr. Domina’s former peer advisors have graduated to careers in education, including one who became a Teach for America corps member. He has also served as an advisor for several undergraduate research projects.
It is for these successes in teaching, mentoring, and programming that Thad Domina is deserving of this award in excellence in teaching.
