PUBPOL 811: Microeconomics: Policy Applications (Graduate) Summary of teaching evaluations (overall score: 4.95/5) This document summarizes student assessments of my teaching during Spring 2015, for the second core course in the Master of Public Policy economics sequence. The evaluation asks students to assess TA performance on a scale of 1-5: 5) Excellent, 4) Good, 3) Adequate, 2) Fair, and 1) Poor. The form contains one open-ended question, which evaluates dimensions of the TA’s performance including but not limited to presentation, organization, knowledge, accessibility, responsiveness, and enthusiasm.

Individual feedback Score of 4 out of 5 – Ying is very good. – Thanks for being a great TA. I would just say be more confident and try to create narratives when you teach. You are clearly very knowledgeable. Also, very fair grading and always accessible.

Score of 5 out of 5 – Ying was always professional, thorough, and responsive to student needs. She is incredibly knowledgeable about the subject matter. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Ying will make a wonderful addition to any Economics department. Not only is she knowledgeable, but she is also very well-respected by her peers and the students that work with her. – Ying is the best TA I’ve ever had. She’s incredibly helpful, and constantly goes out of her way to accommodate her students. I can attribute a great portion of my understanding of microeconomics to Ying’s effective teaching methods. – Ying’s greatest strength is her ability to explain economic concepts clearly. During her review sessions, she presents an organized, well-prepared lesson. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I would definitely take a full course taught by Ying, if possible! – Ying is incredibly knowledgeable, responsive, organized, enthusiastic, and helpful! Presentations are always wonderful. She is by far the most approachable TA I’ve had here at Duke, and you always walk away understanding material better. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: You have a true gift of teaching and communicating complex 1

thoughts in an understandable way. Thank you for coming down to our level. We are all so lucky to have had you help us through this entire first year. You will be missed!! – Ying is patient, organized, responsive to all questions, and has helped me so much this semester (as well as last!) - she is a fabulous teacher and her future students will be very lucky. Thank you! – Ying’s review sessions were immensely helpful, and she demonstrated great enthusiasm and knowledge of the topic when answering questions and teaching supplemental classes. She was able to make the topics easily understandable and accessible. Additionally, she responded to questions and concerns promptly and respectfully. – Ying has been incredibly helpful in teaching class material this semester and last semester. She breaks down the material in a way that allows everyone to understand. She also takes the time to make sure those in her review sessions understand the material that she is presenting. – Ying is an excellent instructor. She is a great presenter, patient, and really goes above and beyond to help students understand very complex concepts. I really have enjoyed having her as my TA this year. Anywhere she goes, her students will be lucky to have her. – She was very helpful with weekly review sessions. Throughout the semester, her review sessions presented materials in a very coherent way; she clearly showed knowledge in the materials she taught. – Ying is an outstanding TA. She has the uncanny ability to “translate” the difficult concepts that are presented and explain them to those that are having difficulty. She has been a godsend this semester and her efforts are very much appreciated. – Always responsive to questions. Very accessible and flexible, considerate of other demands on students – Ying is one of the best teacher’s assistants that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. She is so capable and knowledgable of her craft, in which she truly enjoys passing her skills on to her students. She is quick to respond to E-mails and is always there to support her less than average struggling students. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: She would make the best professor! – Excellent TA. Ying is very talented at distilling complex concepts and helping a class understand the underlying logic, walking us from A to Z. She is knowledgeable, and an organized instructor. She is patient and professional. Thanks! – Ying is an amazing instructor. She provides helpful reviews of concepts covered in class and takes the extra time to meet individually with students and create study tools to help with memos and assignments. Her feedback is always constructive and useful! 2

– Ying has been a great TA. She’s very open to comments and gives us very interesting food for thought during the review sessions. I liked her approachability. – Ying is a fantastic TA and will be an exceptional teacher one day. She was always knowledgeable and able to answer our questions. She went above and beyond, particularly with regard to helping us better learn Excel. We were lucky to be Ying’s “guinea pigs” for her teaching skills. Good luck Ying! – Ying is well organized and knowledgeable. She is flexible and willing to adjust to meet student schedules. – Ying - as I wrote last year - is amazing. She was good at breaking down complicated topics and explaining them to us. She was always understanding and really cared about us and us learning. She was organized and always replied to our emails. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Out of the 5 PhD TAs I’ve had, Ying is the best. I want to take her classes when she becomes a professor. – Ying has been really helpful leading the review session. Accessible and responsive to participants. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: The Excel training is very helpful – Ying is extremely knowledgeable and approachable. She is an excellent teacher and a pleasure to work with! – Wonderful teacher - very helpful! And informative! – She is always helpful and will stay as long as we need to help us understand the concept. – Very clear explanations, clear desire to support student learning, great ability to combine academic enthusiasm with professional pragmatism. Best TA in the program. Appreciate her dedication and commitment to translating professor’s goals into student action/problem solving. – Great. She is very willing to optimize/help within her grading constraint. – Very helpful. She made very detailed comments on our assignments. – Excellent as always. Ying is always available and perceptive to students’ needs. Very helpful and clear in her explanations. I have nothing but positive feedback on her instruction and enthusiasm for teaching. – Always prepared and really helpful, very enthusiastic, and organized. Great job ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Thank you for all your help :)

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– Ying was a great resource, very knowledgeable and helpful. I would definitely take a class from her if she ever offered one. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Great TA. – Ying is very encouraging and helpful in explaining the basic concepts of the microeconomics and I benefitted a lot from her instructions and teachings in the review sessions. The comments she makes on my memo are all very helpful. – Really appreciated Ying’s review sessions. Helpful support and well structured. – Ying was extremely valuable and accessible as a TA. I was not able to take advantage of her Friday office hours as much as I would have liked, but the fact that she had them was very valuable. Furthermore, her teaching style (straightforward and structured) was excellent. Thanks, Ying! – Ying is extremely helpful, and I cannot say enough good things about her. She is always available to the students, and has the ability to make extremely difficult concepts understandable. – Well-organized, exceptionally accessible, and very pleasant to work with. She will be an incredible addition to the PhD/professor community, whatever she chooses to do. – Very knowledgeable, ac cessible, and kind. She explains economic concepts straightforwardly by breaking them down and slowly walking us through them. She is very fair in her grading and will take the time to listen to any concerns you have. She held optional review sessions every Friday and was enthusiastic - and patient! - while teaching us. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Overall a wonderful TA. We were very lucky to have her for both semesters. I can’t wait for her to be a professor! I am going to miss having her as a TA. – I didn’t have the chance to attend Ying’s session this semester. I attended several last semester, however, and she was very knowledgeable and break concepts down easily, was very patient and genuinely seemed to enjoy helping us learn. – Very accessible. Able to organize the review session very well and explain economic concepts clearly. Very patient. – Ying has done a phenomenal job serving as an intermediary between Professor Ladd and the students. Ying is able to explain challenging, abstract theory in terms students can understand. She invested a lot of effort into review sessions and office hours. Thank you, Ying. – Ying should teach the class - always does a great job teaching the review sessions! – Ying is a wonderful TA who can pull difficult economic concepts apart and help us understand the complexities in different ways. She is always willing to answer any questions 4

in her review sessions and truly cares that we understand. She goes above and beyond to provide us with useful materials to complete assignments (such as the excel how-to she created) ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Thank you Ying! I would be lost without your review sessions! – Ying has been an incredible asset to the first year class throughout the year. Her review sessions bridge the gaps between that were sometimes left by professors during the week. She is incredibly responsive, personable, and an excellent teacher. – Very enthusiastic. I didn’t go to the review sessions, but I know my classmates greatly appreciated them. Additionally, fair grading. – Ying’s review sessions were very helpful. I wish she had been able to teach us more Excel. I wish she had been allowed to help us more specifically with problems. She’s a much better explainer than Sunny. I would’ve probably learned more if she had taught the class.

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