[Sci-tech-public] Siegel Teaching Prize

[Deborah K Fitzgerald]

Hi all,

It is my great pleasure to let you know that the 2020-2021 Siegel Teaching Prize winners are Alona Bach and Luísa Reis Castro. The Siegel Teaching Prize was established 15 years ago, to recognize graduate students who have excelled as instructors of MIT undergraduates.

The prize committee, Rosalind Williams and David Kaiser, prepared the following prize citation:

“Academic year 2020-21was a stress test for teachers and students alike, as everyone struggled to adapt to the intellectual and interpersonal challenges of virtual education. The stresses on teaching assistants were especially strong, as seen by the quantity and quality of the nominations we received for this year’s Siegel Teaching Prize. All the nominators emphasized the crucial role of teaching assistants in boosting class morale and exploiting on-line technologies to maximum advantage. Also, all the nominators expressed heartfelt appreciation for their partnership with teaching assistants under such demanding circumstances.

The two winners of this year’s Siegel Teaching Prize brought welcome moral and technical support to their classes, as well as broadening their intellectual reach. The winners areLuísa Reis Castro, who has just completed her HASTS doctorate, and Alona Bach, who is entering her third year of HASTS studies. Luísa Reis Castro was nominated by Robin Wolfe Scheffler, who oversaw STS.006J, “Bioethics,” a CI-H subject, in the fall of 2020. Alona Bach was nominated by William Broadhead, with whom she worked in support of 21H.132, “The Ancient World: Rome” in the spring of 2021.

When Luísa Reis Castro noticed mid-semester in fall 2020 that the students in “Bioethics” were flagging under the stresses of the pandemic, she responded by offering them choices in lesson plans and modes of class participation. She also tapped her own professional network to bring in an academic guest lecturer.

Towards the end of the term, Luísa helped organize a mini-debate about universal health care as a right. Doing this on-line led to a lively exchange of dialogue and chats, culminating in a collaboratively edited Google document. She drew the debate to a close by discussing how students could start planning their final essay, a CI-H requirement. In Professor Scheffler’s words, “[Luísa] had thought long and deeply not only about the practice of pedagogy but also how to support her students’ growth.”

Alona Bach’s doctoral research is distant from Rome, but she led weekly recitation sections covering, in Professor Broadhead’s words, “the vast sweep” of Roman history. Each recitation introduced a new ancient source for close reading and discussion. In their class evaluations, students thanked Alona for raising questions that helped their understanding of these sources, and for giving them detailed written and verbal feedback in one-on-one meetings.

Alona accepted Professor Broadhead’s invitation (not a requirement) to deliver a one-hour lecture to the whole class. Instead of relying on her own research topics, Alona organized this opportunity as an introduction to Roman social history that she called “History from the Margins.” In Broadhead’s judgment, “It was masterful.” Alona was “In complete control of the material,” he reflected, as well as of Zoom’s interactive features. The lecture began with a chat-based brainstorming exercise raising questions about social history and moved on to various types of evidence, including archaeological ones. The class drew to a close by Alona’s “asking the students why one should study this kind of history.” In such ways, Alona Bach and Luísa Reis Castro were not just assisting in the teaching of these classes; they were helping expand and enrich them.”


Please join me in congratulating Alona and Luísa for this wonderful and much deserved honor. I am also grateful to Rosalind and David for serving on the prize committee.

best,
Deborah

Deborah Fitzgerald
Leverett Howell and William King Cutten Professor of the History of Technology
Interim Head
Program in Science, Technology, and Society
MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue
Bldg. E51-296A
Cambridge, MA 02139
dkfitz at mit.edu<mailto:dkfitz at mit.edu>


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