Thirty-one exceptional graduate students have been selected as recipients of the 2023-24 Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Awards, recognizing their strengths and commitment surrounding the craft of teaching. Among them are Lucas Wiscons, who received a Capstone Teaching Award, and Kristen Billings, who received an Early Excellence in Teaching Award.
Kristen Billings is a PhD student in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. Her research investigates U.S. climate security discourses and social movements organizing for demilitarization and climate justice.
She has been a TA for Intro to Community and Environmental Sociology; Food, Culture, & Society; and Intro to Race and Ethnicity in the United States.
“Using the classroom to foster collective learning and student empowerment has been central to my pedagogical practice. I strive to cultivate a participatory learning environment that promotes the growth of students across a wide range of social locations, where every student feels their contributions are valuable,” Kristen said.
“Students often express feeling disempowered by the scale and structural nature of the social and environmental problems they learn about in lectures and readings. My goal is to design assignments and activities that encourage students to not only reflect on how course concepts apply to their lives and communities but to think creatively about problem-solving and their roles in realizing change,” she said. “I hope that students leave the classroom seeing themselves as social agents, people shaped by and equally capable of shaping their worlds.”
Lucas Wiscons is a PhD candidate in Sociology focused on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, criminal justice, social psychology, medical sociology, and qualitative methods.
He has been the instructor of record for courses on Social Psychology, Talk and Social Interaction, and Criminal Legal Interaction. In addition, he has been a teaching assistant for courses on the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Introduction to Criminal Justice, and Statistics for Sociologists. Lucas is also the Department of Sociology’s Instructional Peer Mentor, providing one-on-one consultation and mentorship to teaching assistants within the department.
Lucas said he enjoys making connections with students during what is a time of immense intellectual and emotional growth. He has found that students influence him as much as he does them.
“I’ve strengthened my intellectual curiosity and developed my capacities for patience and compassion through my work with students,” Lucas said. “I find the relational work that, I believe, is integral to exceptional teaching enormously gratifying. I am lucky to have found a way to make it my career.”
This fall, Lucas will begin a tenure track faculty position in the History and Social Science department at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He added that his extensive teaching experience at UW–Madison was central to his strong application for the position.