President Brian Sandoval:
Welcome to Sagebrushers, the podcast of the University of Nevada, Reno. I'm Brian Sandoval. I'm a proud graduate and President of the University of Nevada, Reno. I'm your host of Sagebrushers. Each month at Sagebrushers, which by the way was our University's first nickname, we take a closer look at the people, history and future of our University. We explain why the University, ever since its founding in Elko in 1874, has been about so much more than ourselves, why we remain Nevada's best experiment in understanding who we are and what we are capable of achieving. Today's podcast is being recorded at the Reynolds School of Journalism on our University's campus.

In our third episode of Sagebrushers, we are so happy to welcome Dr. Sarah Cummings, director of Advancements in Teaching Excellence and a teaching professor in chemistry at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Cummings graduated with a bachelor's degree from Haverford College, earned her Ph.D. at Columbia University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah before joining the Nevada faculty in 2007. She has been recognized with multiple teaching and mentorship awards at the college, university and state levels, including the F. Donald Tibbets Distinguished Teacher Award, the Paul and Judy Bible University Teaching Excellence Award and the NSHE Regents Teaching Award. Her recent scholarship has focused on integrating green chemistry, sustainability and systems thinking into organic chemistry courses. Her service has been strongly connected to teaching, learning and faculty mentoring. I'm thrilled today to get to chat with Dr. Cummings about her time here on campus as a teaching professor and how she will continue her excellence in teaching and mentoring faculty in her new role. Welcome, Dr. Cummings.

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
Thank you so much, President Sandoval for the invitation. I'm delighted to be here.

President Brian Sandoval:
We're delighted that you're here. So let's talk a little bit first about your journey to the University of Nevada, Reno, maybe talk a little bit more about your academic background and what brought you to the University of Nevada, Reno.

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
So throughout my undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral experiences, I was really fortunate to work with several great faculty mentors, who really worked on helping me progress as a scientist, a scholar and as a person, cared deeply about my development. And around the same time, while I was in graduate school, and during my time as a postdoc, I had the opportunity to work with undergraduate and graduate students in a mentor capacity, so in the research lab, and it was really during those experiences that my interest in education was sparked and really solidified through those experiences of working directly with a student in the lab. During my postdoc, I was looking for opportunities to go back to undergraduate education, and really looking for that close relationship with students that I had appreciated during my own time as an undergraduate. And so I looked for roles that were strongly connected to undergraduate teaching, and a job opened here at the right place at the right time. And that's how I found myself here.

President Brian Sandoval:
Wow. Now I have to ask this question, because I was a liberal arts major, but in your introduction it talks about how your recent scholarship has focused on integrating green chemistry, sustainability and systems thinking into organic chemistry courses. Could you explain that to our listeners and what that is?

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
So since my time here at Nevada, I've really shifted my focus from traditional chemistry research to education and scholarship of teaching and learning. And so what I've been working on recently at the national level is a curriculum development project about integrating green chemistry – that's more benign chemistry processes and producing more benign chemical products – and trying to integrate those concepts into the organic chemistry lecture courses but also really looking at the systems thinking and sustainability through that lens of trying to figure out: 'What are the bigger impacts of those changes, and how does that affect environmental health, human health, global impacts and really drawing these big picture connections?'

President Brian Sandoval:
That's amazing and how fortunate we are to have have you teaching our students and giving them those lessons. So, as I mentioned before, you've been recognized on countless occasions, and you are one of our most decorated faculty members, and we're really proud of everything that you've done. And in teaching over the last 15 years on our campus, what's your, what has your experience been, and how has it changed during that time?

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
So when I started, I think I would classify my style at that time as a more traditional lecturer. I was drawing from my own experiences as a student and even though I emulated or tried to emulate what I most appreciated from my own mentors – so to be approachable, supportive, enthusiastic and a good communicator – the style still felt inauthentic to me. So in response to student feedback and colleague feedback and a lot of self reflection, I worked on revising and tweaking my style. Around the time that I started and the years after, the University experienced a lot of enrollment growth. And responding to some of that growth really prompted me to work on setting clear expectations, communicating better with students. And that really helped me revise that style.

I also worked on taking risks and experimenting a little bit in the classes, too. So this was with support of colleagues, including my colleague and wonderful spouse who encouraged me to take some risks in the classroom. I tried changing up again, the style and integrating more innovative assignments. And so one of the things that I tried was to have students create videos where they would describe their thought process in how they approached and solved a problem. So in my field, it's really common that there's written explanations where students are drawing chemical structures and to capture that in another way was really challenging. But it turned out that while students produce these videos where they describe their thought process that this actually resulted in deeper learning, and so students would explain that they got partway through recording their response, they realized they didn't really understand something, so they went back to learn it better, and then re explain it. So that process of having to teach to somebody else was a really deep learning experience to that.

President Brian Sandoval:
I think that's wonderful. So what do the best teachers do? I mean, what how do they conduct themselves in the classroom?

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
Some of the advice that I would give just in general is to be really clear about expectations. So really clear assignment guidelines, really clear in what you're expecting students to do. But I think this idea of framing this as, 'Where are you hoping to be?' Right, and the way that the university writes our student learning outcomes is: 'At the end of the course, students will be able to do certain things.' We really want to start there and think about, well, ultimately, where are we trying to get to? How are we hoping that students will demonstrate or show their learning? And how are we going to build the opportunities to develop those skills? When we're thinking about teaching and learning, I've really shifted over time to focus on the learning part, right, so thinking about how to build those opportunities for students to progress in their field and in their own growth. I've also realized, too, that the affective part is really important. So the sense of creating a welcoming environment, building in opportunities for collaborative work to build a learning community and feel a sense of belonging is also really important to student learning.

President Brian Sandoval:
No, and, and you have a different another different method with regard to using the Quad on our campus – and I think most of our listeners are familiar with the Quad; it's one of the most historic and beautiful places on our campus – but can you talk to us about Walking Wednesdays?

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
Sure! Wednesday became my favorite day of the week. So a number of years ago, I realized that students were much more likely to come meet with me outside of class time when I held – most faculty call them 'office hours', but I rebranded as 'student hours' – when I held those student hours in a student space, so in our chemistry help center or in our tutoring center, and there would be many more students coming in for help and working together on on problems. So one semester, I was teaching at 11 to 12 and invited my students after class, weather permitting, to walk with me for half an hour around the Quad. And this was an opportunity to really break down some of those barriers again, moving from a faculty space to a student space, and to provide the opportunity to talk about anything, so I invited the students to join me. We could talk about course content. We could talk about future goals and aspirations. We could talk about just anything they wanted to talk about. And this really quickly became one of my favorite times. It was a really great experience to learn more about student lives, and really provided actually a really great way to get to know students, who then later asked for letters of recommendation.

President Brian Sandoval:
Oh, that's wonderful. And your office is a newer resource on campus, can you tell me a little bit more about it, and then go into the faculty teaching program that you'll be launching this fall?

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
So we are a new office inside the Office of the Provost. And the goal is to inspire, inform, support and celebrate high quality and inclusive teaching on the campus. So some of the ways that we will do this, you can imagine faculty being involved in our programming, really in in several different ways at different points in their career. So as one example, we're currently building up our top priority program, which is a new faculty teaching professional development program for incoming faculty. But we're also working on building opportunities for faculty who just want to level up in some way. So learning about new or innovative practices. And then also providing opportunity for faculty who are already master teachers on our campus to share their practices and innovations back with others on our campus. And then you asked about the new faculty development program, which we'll be launching in the fall. We're hoping to build from the resources and expertise that exist already on this campus, but also to build a community through the cohort program with a new faculty. Currently, we're thinking of a model where there will be some kind of shared core program, and then faculty will have the opportunity to choose what interests them in areas of deeper learning on different tracks.

President Brian Sandoval:
It's just going to make a very special place even more special with regard to the quality of instruction for our students. So I moved to a different subject, and I understand you and your family are massive Wolf Pack fans and attend a lot of the athletic events. Do you have a favorite memory when it comes to Wolf Pack athletics?

Teaching Professor Sarah Cummings:
You'll find my family at many different sporting events. So I think my kids would say their favorite are baseball, women's basketball, soccer, volleyball. Both kids have actually participated in Wolfpack camps over the summer, and they've been really excited to go to games and watch their coaches out on the field. One memory that really jumps to mind is, just very recently, we celebrated my son's 11th birthday at Wolf Pack baseball.

President Brian Sandoval:
And I was there. I saw you there. It was wonderful. So we'll close on that. And Dr. Cummings, thank you for all you do for the University. And I really appreciate how you're elevating the faculty on our campus and teaching. Well, that is all the time we have for our third episode of Sagebrushers thank you for joining us today, Dr. Cummings, and thank you for your leadership and dedication to teaching excellence on our campus. Your work here has greatly impacted our students and faculty and will continue to benefit the larger University. Next month we will bring you another episode of Sagebrushers and continue to tell the stories that make our University special and unique. Until then, I am University President Brian Sandoval, and go Pack!