09/11/2025
By Amanda Vozzo

Date: Wednesday, Sept. 17
Time: 9:30 – 11 a.m.
Location: University Crossing 158

Faculty are welcome to join for part of the time if they cannot attend the entire session.

Backward design is a curriculum planning framework that prioritizes learning outcomes over content or activities.

Faculty who would like to participate should bring a laptop or writing device and think of a single lesson/topic in a course that you currently teach, that you feel would benefit from pedagogical redesign (or that you have an interest in teaching differently). The session is designed to be particularly useful for STEM and Health Sciences, but pedagogical practices apply across all disciplines.

While RSVPs are not required, please email Cecil_Joseph@uml.edu if you're planning to participate – this is more for a coffee count.

BIO: Laurie McNeil is the Bernard Gray Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, having retired in July 2025 after 41 years in the department. Her research has been in experimental condensed matter physics, primarily optical properties of semiconductors and insulators. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and a Deputy Editor at the Journal of Applied Physics. 

Beginning in 2004 she led her department in a transformation of the teaching of all its introductory physics courses to incorporate effective, research-validated methods; established an apprenticeship program to allow both new and experienced faculty to learn effective pedagogy for teaching at all levels; and instituted a program to prepare physics majors to become high school physics teachers. 

These teaching methods are now used throughout the department, and in 2019 it received the APS Award for Improving Undergraduate Education and the Southeastern Section of the APS selected Professor McNeil to receive the George B. Pegram Medal for “Excellence in the Teaching of Physics in the Southeast.” 

More recently she received the 2025 John David Jackson Award for Excellence in Graduate Physics Education from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). McNeil has served APS as the Chair of its Forum on Education and was co-chair of the APS/AAPT Joint Task Force on Undergraduate Physics Programs that produced the 2016 report Phys21: Preparing Physics Students for 21st-Century Careers. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Effective Practices in Physics Programs (EP3) Guide, another joint effort of APS and AAPT.