Dr. Austin Polebitski, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, is being honored with the 2021 Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. The purpose of the award is to recognize a tenure track faculty member who has made distinguished contributions to the mission of UW-Platteville as an outstanding teacher. Polebitski credits his colleagues with helping him get to this point.
“I’m excited to continue my progress towards becoming a full professor,” he said. “My peers nominated me for the award, hopefully it means I’m headed in the right direction. I appreciate that I have co-workers who thought I was deserving. It makes me happy and humble to be amongst really good educators in the department.”
As Polebitski prepares for the fall semester, he’s looking forward to interacting with students. Through his courses, Polebitski uses real-life examples to help students understand what their career field may encounter. He emphasizes the concept of teaching critical thinking.
“It’s the piece that’s going to drive day-to-day decision making in any field, especially in engineering,” said Polebitski. “To have real-life projects that are complex and having the students reason it out on their own; it’s a real strength of our department. I have learned from my co-workers how to get that into the classroom, because it’s really important that students come out thinking that way.”
In Polebitski’s upper-level hydrology course he uses an instructional strategy of blended learning called “flipped classroom.”
“What I love about the hydrology class is students come in and I give them homework. There are four people at a table, and they do their homework together,” he said. “A lot of times it’s other students answering each other’s questions before I even get there; it does not get any better than that. When a student is teaching another student, it’s the best. As an educator, you can’t ask for anything else because it means that student who is teaching truly understands it, and the person they’re teaching it to is hearing it from a different perspective.”
UW-Platteville’s convocation will take place on Thursday, Aug. 26, where Polebitski and other university award winners will be recognized.
“I love being at UW-Platteville,” said Polebitski. “I think it’s great we have awards and honors like this that peers can recommend other faculty who are trying to be successful at their job.”