Teaching Portfolio
General Chemistry- Fall 2006
My first semester at Vanderbilt, I taught two sections of CHEM 101. The first class had 22 students and met weekly. The second section I taught was the weekly make-up session for all other lab sessions. I would have between 1 and 20 students, performing anywhere from 1 to 4 different lab experiments simultaneously. The make-up sessions could be more hectic than my other class, since the students were out of their normal environment with new people, but I found it to be rather enjoyable. The make-up sessions taught me to multi-task and to be constantly aware of my students needs.
I have nothing to document from the make-up sessions. They turned in their work to their regular TA and I received no evaluations from them at the end of the year.
Here are my evaluations from my regularly taught lab in CHEM 101: 
Here is the syllabus I handed out at the beginning of the year:
Here is a sample of some of the handouts/emails over the course of the year:
Forensic Analytical Chemistry- Spring 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed teaching forensic science. I had a small class of eight students, all juniors or seniors. I worked with Grace Zoorob to plan the lessons. It was her first year teaching the class, so I had more liberty in helping plan the lessons than I had in general chemistry. She decided the lessons that needed to be taught, then I would come to the lab, make sure the lessons would work, and then come up with a creative way of introducing the lesson. I made a couple of crime scenes and recruited suspects while focusing on the technical aspects of scientific writing.
Here are my evaluations from the CHEM-227W, Forensic Analytical Chemistry:
Here was the syllabus for the course:
This was a writing course and as such I expected high quality from their lab reports. After I finished grading their first set of reports, I decided to focus on this aspect. I prepared the following handout and spent some time in class going over their reports with them. I do not think I was clear enough about my expectations at first. I worked with them section by section. I saw huge improvements in their writing. By the end of the year, I was receiving lab reports whose quality was high enough for submission to scientific journals.
Sample handout on writing:
Teaching Assistant Orientation (TAO) Workshop- Fall 2009
This past semester I had the opportunity as a teaching affiliate for Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching (CFT) to meet the incoming graduate students in chemistry as they were arriving in Nashville. I taught a two day workshop to help prepare them for their upcoming role as a teaching assistant at Vanderbilt. In the workshop, I covered the basics, from office hours to grading, as well as the more abstract, teaching strategies and how people learn. The following .pdf incorporates my lesson plan, powerpoint with basic notes, and handouts for the event.
TAO chemistry workshop 2009:
Ask part of a follow-up project for this workshop, we interviewed chemistry and biological science students to help future TAs get to know their students. The questions we asked them included:
What were the goals of your lab?
How did you prepare for lab?
How did your TA help you?
What role did your TA play?
What suggestions do you have for future TAs?
I have edited our interviews and uploaded the video to YouTube:
Represented here is a sample of the teaching I have done in the last couple of years. Thank you for your interest. Please contact me with any questions you might have.
lesliehiatt(at)vanderbiltdotedu
Teaching Statement: