The Department of Sociology is honored to announce that the 2024 recipient of the prestigious Diggs Teaching Scholar Award is Collegiate Assistant Professor Heidi Williams. This honor is presented once a year by the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research. Beloved by her students, Williams has demonstrated dedication and personal devotion to teaching above and beyond expectations; these qualities surely tipped the scales decidedly in her favor to the Diggs community.

Williams’ teaching enhancement project proposal discussed how she discovered that collaborative assessments between teachers and students brought unforeseen benefits to both parties. A workshop she took part in at Grinnell College inspired her to pair with an undergraduate student in what is called a Pedagogical Partnership. The workshop was intended to vet implementation of these partnerships. The workshop leaders were especially interested in recruiting professors who would implement these at Research I institutions. What Williams learned through this process sparked her motivation to bring teacher-student collaborative pedagogy to Virginia Tech.

It was important to Williams that the undergraduate student partner sitting in on her class was not a Sociology major. Being a non-major removed the student from the pressure to evaluate the teaching process on the basis of how well she learned the material -– that is, she could be free to evaluate the teaching itself. The student would also meet with the class on her own to gather feedback. Williams met with the student partner once a week, and the student would tell her how she was coming across as a teacher from the perspective of undergraduate peers. Williams would implement the feedback from the weekly sessions immediately so that the changes could be observed in real time.

Although the student partner was mainly taking notes in class rather than actively participating, Williams noticed that the participation of a pedagogical partner transformed the student-teacher dynamic and offered students a sense of increased agency and choice. What particularly struck her was that the students did not request any drastic changes, only small modifications that she had not considered on her own. At the same time, the class’s development of positive affinity with the student partner and respect for her closer perspective served to, as Williams says, “attenuate the age gap” between teacher and students, improving communication overall.

According to the literature Williams explored in constructing her Diggs proposal, the instructor must be willing to be “a radical listener.” The process requires openness and a degree of vulnerability from the instructor which may be novel to them. In her application, Williams noted that “…students often express feeling invisible in courses. Pedagogical partnerships will offer a solution to student alienation by capturing and integrating student voices in the learning process. Further, the design of the pedagogical partnership may reduce inequities in the classroom.” These inequities may exist on the basis of socioeconomic class, as well as other demographics.

As Virginia Tech becomes more diverse, the teaching processes professors are accustomed to have the opportunity to adapt in favor of retention of these underserved, talented young scholars. We are proud to have one of our own faculty leading the way in this innovative approach to teaching and learning at Virginia Tech.

Written by Amy Splitt