• Dean of Arts and Sciences
• BRANDEIS HOME

Experiential Learning Fellowship

Experiential Fellows are outstanding Brandeis student leaders who have engaged with, supported, promoted and facilitated Experiential Learning at Brandeis. Fellows have a demonstrated passion for experiential learning pedagogy and wish to share their transformative experiences and to advocate for the methodology at Brandeis.

 Experiential Learning Fellows

Dan is a rising junior from Boston, Massachusetts. He is a Biochemistry and Neuroscience double major with a Classical Studies minor, but that's subject to change. His favorite Experiential (EL)  course so far is Professor AOKO's Art and Architecture of Ancient Rome, which he took in the Spring of his first year and is the reason he is a classics minor. It was a lecture course, but when she read from Homer and Virgil it was like performance art and even her reviews of Greek architecture kept all 50 students engaged. And of course, all of his laboratory experiences have helped him refine his scientific interests.

Jen Mandelbaum is  from Londonderry, NH. She is  double majoring in Health: Science, Society, and Policy  and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her  favorite Experiential Learning (EL)  course so far has been the practicum for Professor Conrad’s Health, Community, and Society” class. She  loved working on projects with community partners like Mount Auburn Hospital and Healthy Waltham and learning more about the work that these wonderful organizations do. Her work with in the fall with  Healthy Waltham led her to intern there in the spring. Her most transformative EL experience was leading healthy cooking workshops as part of her internship at Healthy Waltham. She enjoyed teaching kids about cooking and seeing the connections they were making between what they were growing in the gardens and the recipes they were making. Her favorite part of these classes was when she would chat with the kids during the cooking lessons and they would tell her that they tried the recipes they made the previous week at home. She especially liked when they told her how they changed the recipe to incorporate their favorite ingredients. This internship helped her to better understand how kids think about their food environment. The real-world experience she has gained through EL at Brandeis has been wonderful, and she is very excited to share her love for EL as an ExCEL Fellow this year!

Avishek Neupane '14

Avishek Neupane is from Kathmandu, Nepal. He is a Computer Science major with minors in Business and Economics. His favorite Experiential Learning (EL) courses so far are the Justice Brandeis Semester (JBS) in Web Applications and Social Networks with Pito Salas and Tim Hickey, The Art of Public Speaking with Andrew Flagel, and 3d Game Design with Tim Hickey. 

The best of the best EL experience that he has had is in the JBS in Web Development and Social Applications. The class learned web development and created a real world product in just 10 weeks! The class was richly experiential where they applied whatever they learned in their product immediately.  The course also gave him an experience of being in a computer startup- like environment. It also had a reflection and team session every now and then, which helped the teams reorganize and go for another sprint.

Overall, Avishek’s first year and a half at Brandeis has been super experiential. The experiential theory cycle of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation is very powerful and he looks forward to spreading the knowledge/benefits/passion of EL @ Brandeis!

Zoe Oppenheimer '14

Zoe Oppenheimer is from Long Island, New York. She is an Education Studies major with minors in Elementary Education, Hebrew Language and Literature, and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. Her favorite Experiential Learning (EL) course that she has taken so far is Teaching and Learning Reading in Elementary and Preschools with Deb Moriarty.  She loved learning about strategies to teach children how to read through Deb’s interactive lessons and then developing and strengthening her skills through her weekly practicum at Stanley Elementary School.  Zoe’s most transformative EL experience has been participating in the Brandeis-Middlebury School of Hebrew, an intensive summer language immersion program.  She signed the language pledge at the beginning of the summer and committed to only using Hebrew for the entirety of the program.  Speaking Hebrew in class, as well as with her friends during meals and other activities gave her the chance to learn Hebrew, not only from books, but also from real-life conversations and experiences.  She  has learned so much from her EL classes and experiences during her first two years at Brandeis and is thrilled to be an ExCEL Fellow this year!