By Irene Hsiao
Congratulations to Sara Massey, who has been named the inaugural Benjamin Ball Freud Teaching Fellow in the Department of Chemistry. As the Freud Fellow, Massey will teach the 101-102 sequence, an intensive, two-quarter general chemistry sequence for undergraduates with a rigorous active learning curriculum. This is the first time a graduate student in the Department has been given the opportunity to teach the sequence—or indeed any freestanding course in the Department. Senior lecturer Britni Ratliff and Professor Scott Snyder will mentor Massey in this new role. “I would like to teach at a small liberal arts college where I can have a smaller classroom environment and interact with students both in a teaching capacity and do research with undergraduates, so I am very honored to be asked to teach these classes,” says Massey. “I enjoy seeing students have confidence in what they’re doing and realize it’s not an insurmountable barrier but something they can master, understand, enjoy, and apply practically, not just in a chemistry class.”
Massey graduated as a double major in kinesiology and chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin. After three years working as an analytical chemist in defense and drug discovery, Massey arrived at the University of Chicago, her top choice for graduate school, to begin her doctoral studies in physical chemistry. Now a sixth year in Professor Greg Engel’s lab conducting research on ultrafast light harvesting in biological systems, Massey has taken every opportunity to expand her teaching repertoire beyond the required teaching assistantships of first year graduate work. In addition to taking on three extra quarters as a teaching assistant in the Department, Massey is also a senior teaching consultant at the Chicago Center for Teaching, where she observes and offers feedback to graduate students teaching throughout the college. “It’s been a nice way to see the universal aspects of pedagogy,” she says. “I’ve observed classes in math, history, the humanities, biology. I’ve learned a lot from seeing what other people are doing. There are techniques you can take from a humanities classroom that can be applied to a chemistry class to be more effective and engaging with students.”