Josh Zimmer, MB&B PhD candidate, was awarded the Prize Teaching Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year. This award is considered one of the highest honors a graduate student can receive from Yale. The fellowship is given to Ph.D. students who have served in Yale College as a Teaching Fellow (TF) or Part-Time Acting Instructors and excelled as instructors. Six to ten PhD students receive this award eeach year. The Prize Teaching Fellows will also be recognized at a dinner with deans in the fall, and will receive a $3,000 cash prize.
Zimmer was a TF for MB&B 300, Principles of Biochemistry I, for three semesters in total, and he was the lead TF of the course for his last semester teaching. The course is composed of mainly second- and third-year undergrads and is the first half of the biochemistry course sequence. Zimmer TFed the lectures and he also taught around 14 students in his section. To be selected for the Prize Teaching Fellowship, one or more of Zimmer’s students nominated him when Yale solicited nominations earlier in the year.
When asked about his teaching experience, Josh said the thing he likes the most about teaching is getting to know the students. He said that since this was his third time TFing the course, that he felt a lot more comfortable with the material and already had a lot of his materials for class prepared, so he was able to spend more time interacting with and getting to know the students. Outside of his regular responsibilities as a TF, Zimmer would make practice exam questions for his students and would go over the solutions in his section to help prepare the students for exams.
After finding out that he had been selected for the Prize Teaching Fellowship, Zimmer expressed that “[he] was super humbled to be nominated by the students, and it really meant a lot to [him]!”
Congratulations to Josh Zimmer on receiving this prestigious honor!
By Jake Thrasher