The Engineering Teaching Community (ETC) is a safe and inclusive space to talk about teaching and learning. At ETC, we identify our goals, explore learning science literature, share our practices, brainstorm possibilities, and build solutions to obstacles we face, inside and outside of our classrooms. The ETC experience offers respite from work demands, fosters new friendships, and generates the feedback we need to continue to grow as educators. Come as you are and as often as you like. All are welcome.
The ETC Calendar is frequently updated with professional development workshops and meetings. You are welcome to explore any or all of the ETC topics. Popular subjects include:
- Teaching methods for STEM learning
- Encouraging students to attend lectures and engage
- Assessment
- Leading a teaching team to success
- Proven classroom management techniques
- Teaching technology that makes life easier
ETC Groups
ETC Faculty
ETC Faculty meeting times are TBD for Fall 2025.
Do you want a real challenge? Then teach engineering. Students arrive in our classrooms at all levels of skill and experience in math, technical reading and writing, and when it comes to understanding the engineers. Successful instructors use innovative, research-based teaching methods that have been shown to increase engagement, generate efficient feedback, and foster student motivation.
The ETC gatherings for faculty offer Baskin instructors a safe and supportive environment where they can unpack teaching challenges in community, actively listen and consider the way others approach dilemmas, and continue to grow, professionally, as teachers. All Baskin instructors are welcome at ETC and all ideas matter. We hope to see you there!
ETC gRAD
ETC gRAD meeting times are TBD for Fall 2025.
Being a graduate student in engineering is a unique time in life. There is research. There is teaching. And for some graduate students, they discover a real interest in teaching after graduate school and a desire to learn to teach. For this reason, there is ETC gRAD. ETC gRAD is a welcoming space for Baskin graduate students to meet, eat, and share not only their research, but their interest in learning to teach. It is a place for unpacking what challenges us as teachers, learning new ways to teach, and finding support. The ETC gRAD group is strong in networking and collaboration, and can innovate a new program or project to better support student learning in engineering, such as ETC Connections.
Join us for ETC gRAD and find a community of other grad students who are interested in teaching and building community. Hope to see you at an ETC gRAD meeting soon!
ETC Undergrad
ETC Undergrad meeting times are TBD for Fall 2025.
Undergraduates at UCSC hold many instructional and supportive roles across our campus, such as tutoring, advising, mentoring, and more. ETC Undergrad exists as a supportive space for student instructors in STEM to meet those in similar roles, exchange ideas about education and learning, and give each other advice & guidance on the challenges of being a student instructor. We explore topics in learning science and models of teaching to give motivated student instructors the same resources as our faculty and graduate instructors. ETC Undergrad is open to all students, and we are always happy to hear feedback for Baskin Engineering’s programs.
We encourage any undergraduates interested in improving learning at UCSC to join us at our meetings!
Our Teaching Principles
How People Learn & Methods for Teaching
Join us for ETC where, in community, we explore our learning theories, innovate teaching methods, and advance research on how people learn in engineering.
Learn more
Teaching is not as easy as telling someone how to do something, and learning is not as easy as observing. Researchers in the field of learning science agree – learning happens because of student activity and engagement. As teachers, we have all asked students a question to only get back silence. Learning science explains that we can avoid that silence and improve the engagement level of our students. Inquiry is a student-centered learning theory that will do just that, and methods of inquiry include eliciting prior knowledge and finding out what students are curious about.
If you’re interested to learn more, check out these resources that inform our teaching philosophies at ETC:
Assessment & Feedback
At ETC, we grapple together with ways to support individual learning and growth with our feedback.
Learn more
As teachers, we know that feedback is the most important thing we do to support student learning, effectively intervene when students struggle, provide encouragement, and offer a pathway toward improvement. But feedback can also seem daunting for teachers – providing individualized, meaningful information to many students sometimes feels overwhelming and nearly impossible.
In ETC, we generate ideas and support, share experiences and ways of doing things, and innovate new solutions for better and more effective feedback systems in our teaching practices that motivate students and support all levels of understanding so students know where they are, where they need to be, and a pathway to get there.
Teaching Through Inclusion
Join us at ETC where we share our experiences with and the challenges we face, ideas we have and strategies we use for creating inclusive learning experiences where all students feel they belong in class and in Baskin Engineering.
Learn more
When we teach through inclusion we are prepared to support all students to learn no matter their background or prior experiences. Closing equity gaps is possible only when we teach through inclusion. Teaching through inclusion is largely about creating and sustaining a learning environment where every student feels they belong.
Teaching can be a rich and rewarding experience when we recognize and respond to the diversity within our classrooms, acknowledge the need we all have to feel we belong, as a prerequisite to learning, and develop strategies, language and practices that create an inclusive learning environment.
Metacognition
Learning to learn is similar to learning to teach and there are metacognitive strategies we use at ETC, sharing our interpretations of why we do what we do and analyzing how we do things now based on teaching experiences.
Learn more
An expert learner uses metacognition to improve their understanding of how they learn. Teachers support students to improve as learners when they make metacognition part of the content of their class. This might look like requiring students to report on the challenges they faced doing an assignment and how they addressed them, or to interpret code in terms of what they find unusual or new. As teachers, we may ask students to resubmit an assignment and explain their errors and their current understanding of the concept. At ETC, we use metacognitive activity to improve our understanding of how we learn and how we learn to teach.
Projects
ETC is always committed to making teaching & learning easier at UCSC, and we are working on a number of projects to help our instructors and students navigate our campus better. If you’re interested in collaborating with us on any of these projects, please reach out to us at be-etc@ucsc.edu.
Degree Pathway Guides
Baskin Engineering provides curriculum charts for their undergraduate degrees, outlining classes and requirements for major declaration and graduation. However, these charts are often confusing for students to navigate.
ETC is working to create new Degree Pathway Guides for our Baskin Engineering undergraduate programs. These guides show the required classes for each BE major, UCSC’s graduation requirements, and the general timeline that most students take their classes in, to give new students a better sense of how they are progressing through their degree.
Check out our completed guides for the 2025-2026 Academic Year!
Tutors and Rooms Project
Tutors in Baskin Engineering previously had to book their own rooms in the UCSC libraries, a weekly endeavor that could often lead to last-minute location changes and inconsistency for the tutors & students. That’s why we started the Tutors and Rooms Project (TARP), a form that tutors fill out to book rooms for the whole quarter for their tutoring sessions! If you need to fill out the form, click here.
This form also allows for data collection on tutoring locations & a rough estimate of student attendees. The form was first used Spring 2024, and we look forward to implementing it in quarters to come.
Teaching Matters
The Teaching Matters Report is designed to capture the experience of teaching for Baskin Engineering. Data for Teaching Matters are collected from Baskin Engineering faculty who respond to questions about their teaching practices and offer insight and innovation regarding how they address different teaching dilemmas. Instructors who participate in a Teaching Matters Report represent all instructors, in terms of years of experience, department, class size, and other factors. Please find past Teaching Matters Reports here and use the findings from these reports to inform the decisions you make while developing your own teaching practice.
Testimonials
I was drawn to ETC because of my passion for STEM education and background in tutoring. Through ETC, I was able to grow closer with so many wonderful people who had a common goals in creating an inclusive environment in university classrooms regardless of student backgrounds. Our meetings together and the dinner we shared, where we able to draft a vision on the steps Baskin Engineering can take to ensure people pass their classes and feel supported, are treasured memories to me. I’m sure ETC will flourish under the current Baskin staff and become a center figure in the UCSC engineering community. Hopefully students will come to see it as a safe space them to get in touch with resources like tutoring and networking communities to feel confident in themselves.
Audrey Ostrom | B.S. Computer Science ‘24 | CSE Tutor
In my view, ETC gRAD is not only a supportive space for experienced teachers and TAs but also an excellent learning environment for passionate newcomers. Experienced members can share their wealth of knowledge, while newer TAs have the opportunity to present and discuss the challenges they face. This creates a mutually beneficial dynamic for all participants.
Abhi Singh | Master’s Student, Electrical Engineering | Outstanding TA in Physics, 2022-2023
I have been in ETC meetings since the beginning! It’s been an enlightening experience because of insightful selection of discussion topics and, more importantly, profound conversations and self-reflection regarding the essence of teaching and methods for improvement. I find it an encouraging environment where we share best practices, innovative approaches, and build community. We find motivation in ETC and support to continuously refine our teaching techniques and enhance the learning outcomes for our students.
Marcela Alfaro Córdoba | Assistant Teaching Professor, Statistics
Resources & Data
Here are some of the resources ETC uses to inform our meetings and conversations around learning, as well as informational resources on Baskin Engineering’s programs.
- How People Learn – Brain, Mind, Experience School
- How People Learn – Learners, Contexts, Cultures
- Things We Do
- Talk Less & Teach More
- Communicating Equity and Inclusion in STEM
- Working in a Group
- Increasing Student Engagement in Reading
- Baskin Engineering Readers and Tutors
Contact:
Jennifer Ann Quynn
- Title
- Curriculum Advisor
- Department
- Baskin School of Engineering
- Phone
- 2064075823
- Campus Email
- Website
- Office Location
- Jack Baskin Engineering Building, 351 (Drop-ins welcome)
- Office Hours
- Drop in any time to BE 351
