TEK Faculty Fellows Bring Transdisciplinary Voices to the 2025 UK Teaching Excellence Symposium

On October 10, 2025, the University of Kentucky’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) hosted its second biennial UK Teaching Excellence Symposium — a campus-wide gathering for instructors to share effective and innovative practices in teaching and learning. Among the presenters at the symposium were several current and former TEK Faculty Fellows, many of whom offered sessions that bridged their work in transdisciplinary pedagogy with broader conversations about teaching excellence.

The TEK Faculty Fellows program is designed to support faculty in developing and redesigning undergraduate courses with a stronger focus on essential employability skills — such as communication, collaboration, multiple viewpoints, and reflection — and transdisciplinary engagement. Fellows work in cohorts, participate in faculty learning communities (FLCs), and receive support from CELT to embed these skills in their courses. Their presence at the UK Teaching Excellence Symposium underscores an important goal: to bring TEK’s pedagogical approaches into dialogue with the greater campus teaching community.

"These faculty, and others in the TEK Faculty Fellows program, are at the forefront of developing and enhancing courses that incorporate durable skills and equip our students to tackle the difficult problems facing Kentucky and beyond,” said Shawna Felkins, Instructional Consultant with CELT who facilitates FLCs for TEK Faculty Fellows to support them as they design and implement their TEK courses. 

Former TEK Faculty Fellows, Patrick Lee Lucas, Rachel Shane, and Winter Phong presented at the symposium on the development and teaching of their TEK course, Reimagining Creative Spaces Across the Commonwealth. Lucas, a professor in the College of Design, and Shane and Phong, faculty in the College of Fine Arts, emphasized how through transdisciplinary approaches and collaborative teaching, students can become better equipped to engage with communities in grounded and meaningful ways. “Working with colleagues outside my own discipline presented one of the greatest opportunities to learn practical things in real time with incredibly talented faculty, staff, and students", said Lucas, "Moreover, TEK and CELT teams helped us along the way to do our best work.”

A list of TEK Faculty Fellows who presented at the symposium is below:

• Renee Bonzani
• Christy Brady
• Liz Combs
• Jens Hannemann
• Jason Hans
• Lou Hirsch
• Chris Huggins
• Muzhen Li
• Patrick Lee Lucas
• Winter Phong
• Erin Richard
• Savannah Robin
• Rachel Shane
• Sarah Vos