Brooke R. LeFevre

Fall 2025 Winner

Brooke LeFevre’s teaching philosophy centers on fostering an inclusive, equitable, and inquiry-driven classroom environment that deeply values diverse perspectives. Rather than adhering to a traditional "banking model" of passive content delivery, she structures her courses around skill- and action-based learning objectives. To build an engaging and supportive community, LeFevre begins each semester with pre-course surveys to better understand her students' unique learning styles and needs. She strategically implements pedagogical scaffolding—such as "think-pair-share" exercises, notebook reflections, reading analysis worksheets, and intentional cold-calling—to build student confidence and ensure equitable participation. By encouraging students to examine historical narratives through multiple, often overlooked viewpoints, she cultivates critical thinking, historical empathy, and constructive, respectful dialogue on complex topics. Her mentor Dr. Dan Barish says of Brooke's classroom: "Students were engaged, challenged, and affirmed all within a highly organized but dynamic classroom. It was everything that Baylor means by transformational education within a caring Christian community."

LeFevre has continuously demonstrated an active commitment to pedagogical growth and scholarly engagement throughout her graduate career. In Fall 2022, she co-authored a successful BEAR Grant to establish an interdisciplinary Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) reading group for graduate students and faculty, creating a sustained monthly forum to explore foundational and contemporary pedagogical literature. In addition to serving as a Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Teaching Fellow in Spring 2025, she has attended professional teaching conferences, such as the American Historical Association’s Texas Conference on Introductory History Courses, and regularly sought out structured classroom observations and mentorship from faculty to refine her instructional methods and course design. 

What Students Say

"Gratification in her classes truly comes through working, not by being perfect and not by skating by. She values effort, improvement, and pushing one’s self. She has high expectations that she expects you to meet, but she never forgets the human that is the student."