For this month’s spotlight, I’d like to feature Dr. Susan King from the UCI Department of Chemistry, a teaching professor for organic chemistry (51ABC) and majors in organic chemistry lab M52LABC. Dr. King is a former UCI transfer student with over 25 years of instructional experience at UCI. She has always loved teaching, and from the very start, she has focused on preparing her students to be successful in their fields by helping them build exceptional critical-thinking skills. She looks for ways to help her students understand organic chemistry concepts and develops effective problem-solving strategies in every class she teaches. Dr. King is one of the DTEI, Digital Learning Institute (DLI) faculty members. I met her before she joined the DLI program when she asked me to help her improve the accessibility of her Canvas navigation design/structure to support her students’ achievement in the new online format during the pandemic.
Dr. King is a hands-on, enthusiastic instructor who always focused on the big picture during the pandemic. She understood how faculty needed to integrate teaching technologies and tools to support students in multiple ways during the emergency period as the pandemic rapidly changed our daily routines. She successfully integrated multiple technological tools into her classes, drawing on her multifaceted technical and educational background. Dr. King says: “I love teaching.” She loves the light turning on when a student gets it. With classes returning to in-person instruction, she recognizes the challenge of switching from virtual learning back to face-to-face instruction. Regardless of the format of the class, she seeks to prepare her students for the real world, teaching them how to tackle challenging problems skillfully and confidently.
In the video below, Dr. King shares her experience on successful interventions when the pandemic first started.
About the Author:
Shu Fen (Fannie) Tsai, M.S.
Instructional Designer, Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI)
Fannie Tsai has over ten years of experience promoting teaching excellence in higher education. As an instructional designer at the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation, she supports faculty in designing courses and content for various teaching modes with backward design and learning technologies. UCI faculty appreciate her help in creating a mastery learning path to guide students’ learning. In addition, Fannie is passionate about inclusive teaching. She devotes diligence to facilitating faculty using inclusive technologies to design an accessible learning environment for all students. Fannie joined DTEI in September 2019 after nine years of service as an instructional technology designer at SDSU. She has a B.A. degree in Multimedia/Programing and an M.S. degree in Instructional Technology.