Astronomy Educator Receives Dads’ Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship

Keely Finkelstein of the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin has been chosen to hold an endowed Dads' Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship for 2021-2022. The fellowships recognize faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in teaching and made significant contributions to undergraduate education at UT Austin.

Finkelstein, an associate professor of instruction in the Department of Astronomy and a STEM instruction consultant with the Texas Institute for Discovery Education in Science, joined the faculty in 2012. She has received two previous awards for her teaching prowess: a McDonald Observatory Board of Visitors Teaching Excellence Award in 2017 and a President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award in 2019. Most recently she received a Transformational Online Instruction Contribution (TONIC) award for 2021.

"I often also see myself as a coach, and not just an instructor, and as a coach I'm helping students build conceptual models, giving them the tools and the opportunities in class to practice the skills, the concepts, the models that we are putting together in the course. In the long run, hopefully that will really pay off, not just for their success in my class but for future learning down the road," said Finkelstein when she received the President's Associates award.

Three other faculty members at UT Austin were also chosen to receive Centennial Teaching Fellowships, which come with a $4,500 honorarium: Seth Bank from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jennifer McClearen from the Department of Radio-Television-Film and Marcelo Paixao from the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies.

The Dads' Association Centennial Teaching Fellowships were established in 1983 by The University of Texas System Board of Regents using funds raised by the UT Austin Dads' Association and matching funds under the Centennial Teachers and Scholars Program. Appointees are nominated by the deans of their college or school and must be actively engaged in teaching freshman undergraduates.