Shoemaker Named a 2012 Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellow

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Every year, Georgia Tech's Center for Enhanced Teaching and Learning (CETL) invites a small, multidisciplinary group of associate professors to become Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellows. These faculty members are nominated for this honor by their college and meet throughout spring semester to discuss innovative ways to improve student learning and to strengthen teaching on the Georgia Tech campus. Teaching Fellows receive a small stipend ($1000) to implement a project to improve student learning in a course during the following summer or fall semester.

Physics Professor Deirdre Shoemaker will use the funds toward the creation of a Relativity Virtual Lab in the Center for Relativistic Astrophyics.  The idea of the lab is to give visual and mathematical support to some of the more challenging topics in Special and General Relativity (like black holes and curved spacetime).  Just as we use labs in introductory physics to demonstrate important physical concepts, these labs will reinforce the student's understanding of gravity albeit virtually. Funds will support a student in helping write the software for the virtual lab.