The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center recognized Leslie Massey as the October 2024 Wally Cordes Chair.  

Massey is an advanced instructor in the First-Year Engineering Program here at the U of A. She is an alumna of the U of A, holding a Bachelor of Science in Biological Engineering and an Master of Science in Environmental Engineering, and she is a member of the Arkansas Academy of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. After working as a project manager at the Arkansas Water Resources Center for several years, she joined the FEP faculty full time in 2013.

She currently teaches various first-year engineering courses, including Introduction to Engineering I and II, and she coordinates the First-Year Honors Innovation Experience, which incorporates students from the Walton College of Business and Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. She has published more than 20 papers on first-year engineering education. She is certified in Effective College Instruction through ACUE and Academic Life Coaching through Coaching Training EDU. Her awards include the U of A Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award (2023).    

In addition to telling the story of her path to becoming the teacher she is, Massey's Cordes Chair presentation on Oct. 30 focused on fostering creativity in the classroom for both students and faculty. She discussed the meaning of creativity - what it is, who does it, and who benefits from it. She described how adding a few constraints or carefully designing an open-ended prompt can enhance student creativity. She provided a structured set of recommendations for empowering students to think creatively. 

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About the Cordes Chair: The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center recognizes six outstanding teaching faculty each academic year as Wally Cordes Chairs. Faculty are selected as Cordes Chairs because they embody the student-centered teaching excellence that late University Professor Emeritus Wally Cordes exhibited throughout his more than 40-year career at the U of A. 

About TFSC: TFSC invests in faculty excellence, promotes innovation in teaching and learning, and supports programs to advance student success. The center provides educational opportunities for faculty such as teaching and learning workshops, teaching symposia, and new faculty orientation. TFSC offers competitive teaching and learning grants for faculty, celebrates effective teaching with several awards and an awards reception, and promotes faculty-to-faculty mentoring through classroom observation. More information about TFSC can be found at their website or by following them on LinkedIn.