Meet Sam

Dr. Samantha ("Sam") Elliott (she/they) received her B.A. in German and B.S. in Biology from Furman University in 1999 before completing her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004. Elliott pursued NIH-funded postdoctoral studies at Duke University and taught as an adjunct at Durham Technical Community College before starting her tenure-track position in 2006 in the SMCM Biology department. As a faculty member, she taught numerous courses to both majors and non-majors, including introductory biology, cancer biology, immunology, forensics, and associated laboratories. She helped revise the first semester introductory biology curriculum to include more active learning and metacognitive processes to improve student learning. Dr. Elliott was the departmental assessment coordinator (2015-2018), and served on the institutional assessment implementation committee (2016-2018). She also served as founding coordinator of the SMCM Summer Undergraduate Research Program from 2012-2014, and the Academic Planning committee (2013-2016).

Since 2007, Dr. Elliott has pursued both informal and formal training in biology education research, inclusive teaching practices, and leading professional development seminars. She participated in the Biology Scholars Research Residency (2008-2009), spent her sabbatical (2012-2013) at the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) at the University of Maryland, is an alum (2012) and mentor (2019, 2021) of the PKAL STEM Leadership Institute, volunteered with the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education (including being Editor-in-Chief from 2014-2018), is a Fellow in the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE) since 2015, and enrolled in graduate-level education measurement and statistics courses at the University of Maryland (2018-2022).

In 2018, Dr. Elliott took a leave of absence from SMCM to pursue a full-time position as Assistant Director for Faculty Programs at the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center (TLTC) at the University of Maryland. She was recruited back to SMCM to be the Founding Director of the Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning in early 2019. Through her work at CITL, Dr. Elliott works with a variety of faculty, staff and students on campus. She also teaches in the general education curriculum and co-leads the Public Health Inquiry with Dr. Bill Roberts. Her current projects include the FOLC-E learning community/community of practice and Immunoreach community of educators, both funded through the National Science Foundation.

A current list of Dr. Elliott's publications may be found in Google Scholar.