Abby Silbaugh (Neurobiology) was one of four UChicago graduate students awarded the Wayne C. Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching, which is given annually to University of Chicago graduate students for outstanding instruction of undergraduates. Prize recipients were selected on the basis of nominations from students in the College, and Abby was chosen for the BSD.
Getting students to be able to remember concepts and ideas is one of the priorities for any educator, but especially when the instructor's area of focus is memory and the brain. Abby Silbaugh assists in teaching four classes at UChicago including “Building the Brain” and the ever popular “Conquest of Pain.” For Silbaugh, who earned an undergraduate degree in neuroscience and currently works in Professor Christian Hansel’s lab focusing on memory formation, pain is the last thing she wants to create for her students.
“Feeling like you’ve been thrown off the deep end seems to happen at every step of the educational journey,” she said. “I try to help students be more comfortable with uncertainty by acknowledging the shared experience and celebrating how creative and resilient they are when put outside their comfort zones.”
Silbaugh’s courses have seen a wide range of topics be covered. Her students have dissected human brains while learning neuroanatomy, learned about anesthesiology inside an operating room, and discussed traveling to mars and how to build a brain. She finds that the mindset of the UChicago student meets each of these topics head on.
“UChicago undergraduates are the most creative and brilliant people I’ve met,” said Silbaugh. “Their curiosity takes them to the edge of scientific discovery very quickly before they start pushing the boundaries they just discovered forward.”
Much like one of the main functions of the brain is to process information and learn, Silbaugh believes that her job is to help her students do the same thing during each class.
“I feel like my main role is to help them find the tools to answer the questions that I cannot,” she said. “I keep learning how I can be more supportive. If something isn’t working, I try to use it as an opportunity to understand the students' perspectives and think of better ways to explain things to get to that ‘aha’ moment.”
Read the full story by Colin Terrill, originally published May 22, 2025.