Vinicius Okada da Silva

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

ECON 303: Intermediate Macroeconomics

Instructor (joint with Flavio Rodrigues and Yue Bao) - Fall 2022*, Spring 2023.
Head TA - Fall 2021*, Spring 2022*, Fall 2023, Spring 2024*, Fall 2024*, Spring 2025*.
TA - Fall 2020*, Spring 2021.

*indicates ranked in the "List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students"

Student Comments:

Vini was enthusiastic and focused in his teaching. His delivery of the course material was thoughtful and easy to digest. He regularly applied it to exam preparation.
He was one of my favorite TA's, was very honest with what we should focus on and what we might struggle with and always tried to engage us or help explain the concepts we learned in class (which didn't elaborate much on the application) and made them make a lot more sense
He was a really knowledgeable and caring teacher; he explained everything clearly. My best econ TA
He's pretty patient. He's engaging with the class. For each question, he would encourage students to think first, and then give out an explanation, which helped me to actively think.
Vini did a great job of supporting lecture, understanding what students were confused about and detailing complex concepts in simple ways. I always attended this optional session because I felt that I was getting ahead of those that only attended lecture, with Vini allowing me to internalize the information more easily and clear up any concerns I had.
Straightforward teaching approach, can tell he's an expert on the material and he wants to help students learn.
I think the discussion section is the best part of ECON 303. The TA did an excellent job at walking through steps and showing what was important to know for the exams. The discussion slides were easy to follow and we were offered many resources.

Case Western Reserve University

PHYS 121: General Physics - Mechanics