AGEP Fellows’ Experiences
Fellows discuss the positive impacts that the AGEP program has had not only within their career path, but also within themselves.
Mentorships:
After the Summer Institute, the AGEP fellows participated in a variety of activities the following fall semester. Each fellow shadowed their mentor at their respective CSU campus, which allowed for the fellows to make connections with CSU campus faculty and learn the ins-and-outs of what it means to be a CSU faculty.
Mentor and fellow pairs at UC Santa Barbara for the Summer Institute workshop 2019.
The mentors said the following in regard to their experience with the AGEP fellows:
“I think the program was excellent. The Fellow was able to be not only be part of several different aspects of my day-to-day as a faculty member at a CSU institution, but she was able to actually play an active role. I think this was a fantastic experience for me and hopefully for the Fellow, too. I benefited from having a different perspective in my teaching and during my research meetings. I think it gave the Fellow good insight into one of the many options her future may hold and if she chooses the route of comprehensive university, what it means to balance teaching and research”
“The Fellow did an amazing job, he gave his unique contribution to a new class by suggesting novel assessment techniques, including presentations and internal peer-reviews that the students did among themselves; we were able to mimic real events and conferences during the class, and we got very positive feedback in the student evaluations. Also, he always had a very positive attitude in his interaction with the students and he shared his research interests in very nice presentations about soft-matter physics. In summary, I am very confident that he will become a great teacher in the future, hopefully within the CSU system!”
“The program was a great success. Student mentees gained valuable teaching experience and were able to integrate themselves in a research/teaching lab...to see how to best balance teaching and research with mentoring students. For many it was their first time designing course materials from scratch, which is really important for them at this stage. I was able to work with a highly performing graduate student doing PhD-level work, which was rewarding, and my teaching benefitted by having my mentee in the classroom..”