Iowa State Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Lecturer Beth Hartmann has been selected to be an assistant mentor for the 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ASCE ExCEEd) Teaching Workshop at Florida Gulf Coast University. The workshop will take place June 23-29, 2012.
Hartmann attended the workshop last summer at West Point, New York, and was asked to come back as an assistant mentor. She explained that the conference involves very intensive training to improve teaching methods for civil engineering instructors. “It’s lots of work, but it’s loads of fun, too,” she said.
Each summer ASCE invites 48 civil engineering instructors from around the country to attend seminars on topics such as learning styles, communication skills, principles of effective teaching, teaching with technology and development of interpersonal rapport with students. A “learn by doing” format is encouraged as teachers become students.
“It was an amazing experience,” Hartmann said about the 2011 workshop. “It was one of the best weeks of my life.”
This summer, as an assistant mentor, Hartmann will be critiquing participants as they put the ExCEEd teaching model into practice. She also will provide demonstrations throughout the workshop.
Hartmann hopes to share what she learned in the 2011 workshop with colleagues in the CCEE department. She currently is working on getting a two-day ExCEEd traveling workshop—a mini version of the weeklong conference—to come to Iowa State.
CCEE communications intern Brady Rebhuhn contributed to this story.