Nedal Named a Wimmer Faculty Fellow

Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation has named Dani Nedal, an Institute for Politics and Strategy postdoctoral fellow, one of four 2019-2020 Wimmer Faculty Fellows.

The fellowships are made possible by a grant from the Wimmer Family Foundation and are designed for junior faculty members interested in enhancing their teaching through concentrated work designing or re-designing a course, innovating new materials or exploring a new pedagogical approach. Fellows work in close collaboration with Eberly Center colleagues and receive a stipend to acknowledge the work it takes to improve their effectiveness as an educator.

 “Dani is a gifted and dedicated teacher, and committed to getting even better, with the support of the Wimmer Fellowship and Eberly Center," said Baruch Fischhoff, Howard Heinz University Professor and interim director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy.

Nedal’s project will focus on his Global Nuclear Politics course, offered this fall. The course is designed for students to become “informed consumers of academic and policy debates about nuclear issues, capable of critically engaging with different arguments and positions, and of articulating their own views on the subject.”

“The goal is to help students become more efficient and effective readers — to help them not only get through the readings, but also get the most out of the material,” Nedal said. “We want to help them build a skill set that enhances their experience at CMU, but that they can also carry over to their broader personal, academic, civic and professional lives.”

Achieving this goal is no small task, especially in an introductory-level course where students come in with varying amounts of background knowledge and skills. Nedal plans to help his students develop these skills by designing weekly assignments and classroom activities that provide students with targeted practice and feedback on their critical reading skills.