Megan Frary, Ph.D.

Megan Frary is a Senior Educational Development Consultant in the Boise State Center for Teaching and Learning and a Clinical Associate Professor in the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSMSE).  Dr. Frary has previously served as the Undergraduate Coordinator for Materials Science and Engineering as a faculty associate in the Center for Teaching and Learning; where she launched and coordinated the Graduate Certificate in College Teaching.  Dr. Frary has been recognized for her teaching work with both the 2008 Bradley Staughton Award from ASM International and the 2016 ASEE Pacific Northwest Section Outstanding Teaching Award. Her current research is sponsored by NSF and is related to (1) how teaching experiences help graduate students develop their professional identities and (2) how to evaluate teaching effectiveness. 

Learn More About Dr. Frary’s Role in the CTL

• Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering, MIT, 2005
• M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, 2001
• B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, 1999

MSE courses taught:

• MSE 312 Mechanical Behavior of Materials (2006-8, 2017-present)
• MSE 651 Graduate Teaching Assistant Experience (2018-19) 
• MSE 308 Thermodynamics of Materials (2010-16)
• MSE 418/518 Phase Transformations and Kinetics (2010, 2013) 
• MSE 508 Solid State Thermodynamics (2009)
• MSE 497/597 Application of Mathematica in Materials Science and Engineering” (2008-10) 
• MSE 305 Bonding, Crystallography and Crystal Defects (2005-08)

Instructional videos:

I used a flipped class for both MSE 308 and MSE 312 and developed short video lectures for both.  The thermodynamics video lectures and mechanical behavior video lecture playlists can be found on youtube.  

Graduate Certificate in College Teaching courses taught:

• GCOLL 511 Teaching in Higher Education (2014-present)
• GCOLL 513 Practicum in College Teaching (2015-present)
• GCOLL 514 Internship in College Teaching (2017-present)
• GCOLL 516 Explorations of Pedagogy (2017-present)
• GCOLL 517 College Teaching Portfolio (2015-present)

NSF-IGE: Graduate Identity Formation through Teaching (GIFT) (9/1/18-8/31/21)

PI: Julianne Wenner, Co-PIs: Megan Frary, Paul Simmonds, Donna Llewellyn

The goals of of GIFT are to: 

• Create a robust educational model that promotes professional identity development and provides supported opportunities for graduate students to practice knowledge transformation.
• Scale up our pilot model of GIFT (working with the Physics Department) to work with other departments on campus (Biological Sciences, Geosciences, Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering).
• Research the program in terms of: (1) the development of graduate student professional identity; (2) the impact on students’ faculty advisors; (3) variations in impacts on students, and (4) variations in the enactment of GIFT due to disciplinary differences.

NSF-IUSE: A Framework for Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness (FATE)

PI: Shawn Simonson, Co-PI: Megan Frary

The goals of FATE are to: 

• • Implement the framework and rubric as part of the faculty evaluation process in select STEM departments while using others as controls
  • Offer workshops to enhance the implementation process which: (1) support department implementation of the framework in the evaluation processes, (2) support faculty members in compiling a teaching portfolio in response to the framework, and (3) support all instructors in adopting the kinds of teaching practices described in the framework. 
  • Begin to answer the questions, (1) Will changing the ways in which teaching is evaluated change teaching practices, thereby improving student learning? (2) What differences exist in how the framework and rubric are applied and implemented to assess teaching effectiveness across disciplines?