Four UD doctoral students were recently named recipients of the Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching Award.
Honored this year were:
- Laura Cutler, a doctoral student in human development and family studies;
- Peyton Delgorio, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering;
- Navid Mohammad Mirzaei, a doctoral student in mathematics; and
- Xinxin Qu, a doctoral student in computer science.
Delgorio said: “As a former student in the “Medical Imaging Systems” class, transitioning to a teaching role has been a highlight of my graduate career thus far. This opportunity allowed me to expand my role as an academic mentor by helping students build confidence in understanding complex subject topics. We are told as engineers to create the solutions to the problems we are given. I believe that there are two important factors required in developing valuable solutions: (1) identifying what you know and what you still need to learn and (2) utilizing prior knowledge to effectively research information required for developing the best solution. My goal was to help students understand their potential by building their critical thinking skills. I spent extra time with them working through assignments and explaining more difficult concepts. When describing an approach to a problem, I would give them a starting point and encourage them to use what they had learned in lecture to research a solution. Through this approach, they were able to use what apply their understanding of the course material to develop final solutions to assignment and test problems. Contributing to the education of aspiring engineers was both rewarding and satisfying. I hope the critical thinking skills gained from tackling challenging problems in the classroom aided the students’ development as future engineers.”