Dr. Rachel Sangree:
A Focus on Student Skill

Dr. Rachel Sangree is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where she teaches courses around structural engineering and serves as the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies and Program Chair for EP Civil Engineering. Rachel is interested in improving the treatment of historic structures, identifying and implementing effective teaching methods in the structural engineering undergraduate curriculum, and exploring methods to attract and retain future generations of civil engineers through community engagement and K-12 outreach.

Sangree teaches 560.211: Statics & Mechanics of Materials Laboratory to sophomore undergraduate engineering students every fall at JHU. The students enjoy the labs and connecting the theory to the experiments, but Sangree has found that students procrastinate on generating laboratory reports as they are time-consuming. Due to their procrastination, students don’t get as much feedback from Sangree and the teaching assistants along the way.

Sangree’s problem of practice guiding question is:
How can I help students improve their technical writing skills in an undergraduate lab course without overwhelming them with work?

To address this problem, Sangree plans to implement a scaffolded approach to laboratory report writing to help the students stay on track and to provide more opportunities for feedback before they submit their final reports.

Students will be required to attend two laboratory meetings for each lab (instead of one previously) and complete multiple small assignments before and during these two meetings. For example, before the first meeting students will watch videos and submit the Introduction and Procedure sections of the lab report. During the first meeting, students perform the laboratory experiment and collaborate and discuss with their lab partners.

Sangree also identified ways to provide feedback in the labs throughout the term. Each lab will have a different approach such as completing a worksheet and receiving feedback on it from the course teaching assistants. In one lab, Sangree will “flip” the lab through guided activities that occur online after the first meeting.

Sangree is implementing these new ideas in the fall 2021 term. She oriented her TAs to her approach and added lab items and organized her Blackboard course site. She developed slides to introduce and explain the approach to students. Sangree can be contacted at [email protected].

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The faculty featured in this issue collaborated with their colleagues during the Faculty Forward Fellowship to identify specific problems of practice, a plan for implementation, and a timeline to put their plans into practice during the program.

Consider applying to the 2022 cohort if you are interested in learning more about best practices and the science of teaching and learning and exploring ways to engage and motivate students. The application is available at https://facultyforward.jhu.edu/faculty-forward-application/.