BME Faculty Member Receives UCI Pedagogical Development Award

April 22, 2020 – Christine King, biomedical engineering assistant professor of teaching, is the recipient of this year’s UC Irvine Excellence in Pedagogical Development Award. This recognition is given by the Academic Senate Council on Teaching, Learning and Student Experience, and the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation. It honors faculty members who have spent considerable time and effort engaging in pedagogical development opportunities, mentoring graduate students, or helping colleagues and their department improve teaching.

King, who will receive $1,000 and an engraved award, works to incorporate more active and hands-on principles in the classroom to improve learning experiences for undergraduate biomedical engineering students. This includes advancing design/build/test processes and computer-aided-design (CAD) courses to integrate CAD with real-world prototyping of medical devices. She also seeks to increase active learning techniques, such as learning assistants and peer-grading of software code; mentors graduate students to employ novel team cohesion strategies; and is working on expanding her department’s STEM outreach to K-12 students through summer programs.

King was surprised and grateful to receive the award. “Without the support of my faculty and students, I would not have been able to accomplish any of the work I set out to achieve at UCI,” she said. “This is truly a win not just for me, but for the Department of Biomedical Engineering and our school of engineering.”

The 27th Annual Celebration of Teaching event, at which award recipients were to be honored, was scheduled for April 23 but has been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

– Megan Lohre