Elayne Stecher

Elayne Stecher

PhD Candidate at UCLA

Teaching

Current/Upcoming Courses

Associate Instructor, UCLA:

Previous Courses

Associate Instructor, UCLA:

Teaching Associate, UCLA:

Teaching Assistant, UCLA:

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PS169

“Professor Stecher is an extraordinarily engaging lecturer. She manages to make class fun and makes me actually want to do the readings. I typically never do the readings and still get A’s, but in this class I actually read just so I could discuss with her. She also tries really hard to not push her perspective/opinions on you… She encourages you to form your own opinions. Also, this class was not that easy but I still liked it. Usually I hate hard classes but this was a rare instance where I enjoyed a somewhat difficult course. I think what made the difficulty rewarding was that we got to have class discussion so often and she was always very personable.”

“I think for the natural challenges that come with teaching an online class, Elayne was able to work around them really well. She made sure that we facilitated productive and nuanced conversations in our breakout rooms. She kept class discussions going at a good pace. She made it very clear that if we were having any issues her email and office hours were available to us. She seemed to genuinely care about our ability to understand the content and valued our insight. I also appreciated that she allowed the class to disagree with each other. We discussed complex topics with often no right answer, so I liked that she emphasized that we could disagree respectfully with our classmates opinions and with her own.”

PS156A

“Elayne was genuinely the best TA I have ever had. She was approachable, friendly, and exceptionally knowledgeable about the course material. I happened to really enjoy attending section all quarter long because she fostered critical thinking skills and familiarized her students with strategies to help make the content more digestible. In addition to her great explanations and simplifications of difficult concepts, one of Elayne’s strengths is how well she fostered a collaborative learning environment. She encouraged us to work with our peers and diversify our knowledge of the material we were learning, all while allowing us to do so in an inclusive and even fun setting.”

“Elayne is simply an incredible TA. On top of all else that she does, she dedicated her time to make sure we succeeded in the class. The structure of her discussion sections consisted of a combination of small group work and large group discussions. I felt this perfectly allowed everyone to feel comfortable speaking out to the whole class, and I felt like my understanding of the readings always expanded with discussion with my peers. Outside of this, she was always understanding of our workload and tried to help us as much as possible by giving us reading and studying techniques. In my opinion, she is also quite a funny and enjoyable person, she always made discussion section light despite it’s late time in the day.”

PS179

“She was very good at explaining code and breaking it down and made it very understandable. Walking into this class, I was very intimidated, as I had never coded in my life before. R studio was entirely new to me, and I was very nervous to take this class. After the first discussion, I was a lot more confident because she explained everything so well and was very patient when we did not understand something. She was willing to explain code until it was clear and if we did not understand, we always knew she was available for office hours. Elayne was very approachable and I felt very comfortable asking her for help because even when I was really confused, she never made it seem that being confused was a bad thing.”

“Stecher was an incredible guide in helping my classmates and I formulate our experiment proposal! She provided useful feedback while supporting our collective creation. I would say that would be one of her greatest strengths, because in a class of 20 students I wouldn’t have expected collaborative work to run that smoothly. Another strength of hers that I must include is her patience and ability to explain things in multiple ways when my classmates or I didn’t fully understand something the first time.”

PS129

“Elayne is awesome. She is so knowledgeable, but very approachable and explains things in an extremely digestible manner. She has improved my course understanding so much. I really value how she constantly challenges us to improve our thinking, but never in a harsh or discouraging manner. She is definitely one of, if not the best, TA I have ever had.”

“I really liked the way that Elayne explained things. She managed to make the readings very easy to understand and was very accessible as a TA. I went to one of her office hours once and I left feeling like I understood everything a lot better. She was also a fair grader and really took the time to put meaningful comments on each of her student’s midterms. Her optional review sessions also helped me do well in the class.”