An NSF Grant Will Support More Learning Assistants on Campus 

Abigail Hollmann was headed for a career in health care when she first came to CU Denver—but she was dreading the physics classes she’d have to take as a pre-health student. That all changed when she got to College Physics II.  

The course was taught by Assistant Professor Julian Gifford, who uses learning assistants (often called LAs) in his classroom. Learning assistants are current students who have taken a given course, done well in it, and are hired in subsequent semesters to assist students in that course. “My impression of them was just like, really intelligent, capable, kind, and wonderful people who enjoyed the environment that they were working in and really wanted to be there,” Hollmann said.  

The learning assistants made her want to be there, too. She was able to get more one-on-one support in a way that felt totally unintimidating. Her classroom experience felt more relational, and she could even start to see herself in some of the learning assistants—after all, they were her peers. Now, she is a learning assistant, herself, and plans to become a high school physics teacher and help all students see themselves succeeding in a topic that once intimidated her. “Anyone can do physics,” Hollmann said, enthusiastically.  

In Gifford’s class, learning assistants help their peers as they tackle hands-on projects in the classroom. They have no role in grading. The Learning Assistant program has found a strong foothold in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) as a support to help students succeed.  

Now, thanks to a three-year grant from the Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) program at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the College of Engineering, Design and Computing (CEDC) will get learning assistants in some of their classrooms, too. CEDC is collaborating with CLAS’s Learning Assistant program to roll out their own. The program is intended to grow the number of students who successfully complete engineering programs at CU Denver and to improve their experience as students in doing so. “Intersectionality was the foundational principle for this grant,” said Karl Diaz-Sanders, a student success coach. “Retraining faculty in the frameworks of ‘servingness,’ intersectionality, and culturally responsive pedagogy ensures that students’ individual identities are recognized and that the specific barriers they face are acknowledged and addressed in the classroom. This approach is essential for creating engineering education that is truly equitable and supportive for all learners.” 

In addition to funding the salaries and a two-credit pedagogy course for learning assistants starting in the fall of 2026, the grant will also fund inclusive pedagogy training via the Inclusive Teaching Community (ITC) for a cohort of five CEDC instructors for each of the grant’s three years, and a research effort to assess the efficacy of these components in the context of CEDC at CU Denver. “We understand that there is such a thing as prototyping,” said Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Construction David Mays. “So, you build it, you run it, and then, based on what works and what doesn’t work, you go back and you rebuild your design.” 

That’s the spirit behind the project, which grew from a CEDC self-study that was primarily informed by students and recent graduates of the college. The study was led by Christine Velez, a senior evaluator at the Evaluation Center in the School of Education & Human Development (SEHD). “That report gave us some very specific ideas about what the students are telling us is working,” Mays said.  

Students shared with Velez they learn best in classrooms where the professors made adjustments based on real-time feedback about how they were doing throughout the semester, rather than just at the end. “So, if the LAs are hearing from the students, ‘You know, that stuff you did last week about the impulse momentum equation, everybody’s totally confused, you’re going to have to go back and try again.’ If I hear that from the learning assistant, that is going to give me information I need to make the class work for my students in close to real time,” Mays said.  

CEDC will start using learning assistants in some of its courses—which are still being determined—beginning in the fall 2026 semester. The chair of each of CEDC’s five departments will nominate one faculty member to take part in the inclusive pedagogy training, which they will also start that fall. Those who complete the training will be awarded a small cash bonus.  

Mays hopes to create more experiences for engineering students that are like the one Hollmann had with physics. He sees engineering as an important avenue through which we create our shared world—and he wants to support learners in their contributions. “What does the future look like? What kind of society do we want to live in? What do we need to build now so that people in the future will have better opportunities? Engineering is very much about that stuff,” Mays said. “Let’s get more people doing cool stuff to make the world a better place.”