News: Prof Hebel welcomes MIT students

University President Prof Dr Udo Hebel welcomed students and PhD Candidates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to his office on Tuesday afternoon. 
The participants were guests at the University of Regensburg from 10 to 26 January as part of MIT's Global Teaching Labs (GTL) program. During their stay at the UR, the participants taught at a Regensburg school in order to be able to use their experience for a career, usually in academia. 
In the half-hour conversation in the President's office, Prof. Hebel asked, among other things, about the individual reasons for participating in the Global Teaching Lab, the reasons for choosing to complete the program in Germany and the experiences that the individual participants have had both in the program and privately in Germany and Regensburg.
The participants' lessons were prepared, taught and reflected on as part of the seminar "Bilingual Chemistry Teaching" together with student teachers from the University of Regensburg under the guidance of Prof Dr Oliver Tepner (Chemistry Education) and Dr Victoria Telser (Academic Councillor in Tepner's working group in the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy). This year, Joshika Chakraverty (Chemical Engineering and Computation concentration), Chantalle Krajewska (Chemistry), Ayannah Lang (Chemistry) and Oswaldo Martinez (Chemistry and Biology) were able to teach a total of 27 lessons, mainly in the subject of Chemistry, in cooperation with Dr Nadine Boele, teacher of Chemistry and Mathematics, at St. Marien-Gymnasium in Regensburg. "Through this program, our pre-service chemistry teachers also benefit from an international perspective and the cooperation with MIT. This is an opportunity that is not often offered as part of teacher education," explains Prof Tepner about the successful cooperation.

About Global Teaching Labs

MIT’s Global Teaching Labs (GTL) program recruits top MIT students who want to actively participate in the Institute’s experiential approach to learning. GTL challenges you to learn by teaching – synthesizing and presenting your knowledge, working in teams, and communicating with peers from different cultural backgrounds.
For three to four weeks each January, GTL participants travel abroad to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses – and sometimes other topics including entrepreneurship and debate – to high school and university students. This high-impact program attracts several hundred highly accomplished candidates from across the Institute. Selected participants are trained about teaching materials, platforms and communication techniques, and introduced to the education system and culture of their host country. 

Global Teaching Labs (external link, opens in a new window)