Demonstrating the connections between science and society is a core competency in undergraduate biology education (Vision and Change, 2011) and may help encourage more undergraduates to pursue and persist in science programs.  In biology, content can readily be connected to societal or cultural issues students care about. For example, this could include discussing the impacts of deforestation on communities that live in the Amazon rainforest or the disproportionate effects of excessive heat on low-income communities in major cities in the US.

The three aims of my postdoc are to assess the presence (or lack) of connections between content and societal and cultural issues in national standards (Aim 1) and a national sample of course materials from introductory biology courses (Aim 2) to illustrate the current prioritization and implementation of these connections. Through two randomized controlled trials (Aim 3), the project will experimentally manipulate whether students receive content connected to societal/cultural issues or not and measure learning and affective outcomes such as intent to persist in science and engagement-related emotions.

I am excited to continue this line of research to explore potential disconnects between whether instructors and students notice these connections and the impact of including these connections on assessments with an NSF Improving Undergradaute STEM Education (IUSE) award in collaboration with Elli Theobald. 

Students learn more and perform better in classes that use active learning practices, where students engage with course material and their peers during class, and these practices disproportionally benefit students from marginalized backgrounds. However, active learning is an umbrella term that is not well-defined. I am characterizing elements of course structure and active learning practices based on 94 classroom recordings and 48 syllabi from 50 introductory STEM instructors. Integrating these data with student survey data, I am identifying instructor practices that are associated with higher student engagement. 

One underutilized mechanism to engage students in science classrooms is to elicit an emotional response. Epistemic emotions are those related to the process of learning and include curiosity, frustration, and surprise. Using latent class analysis, I identified the underlying emotional profiles that undergraduates experience in their introductory STEM courses in a national sample (n=6719). The emotional profiles affect engagement and course performance, with the profiles characterized by high curiosity reporting increased engagement and course grades, suggesting that eliciting curiosity may increase engagement and performance.

Having a relatable role model can be pivotal for students' decisions to pursue and persist in a field of study. Having a role model with a similar identity can be particularly impactful for students. Given the dual roles of faculty as undergraduate instructors and scientific researchers, they are poised to be relatable role models for students in their courses.

In my PhD I studied the presence of instructors with myriad personal identities to understand the potential for instructors to act as role models for their students with similar identities. I also tested the impact of an instructor sharing their LGBTQ+ identity with students via descriptive in-class studies and online randomized controlled trials. These disclosures were widely perceived as appropriate and helped to facilitate a welcoming classroom environment. I will continue to use large-scale data from college classes around the country, experimental validation, and interview techniques to investigate student perceptions of instructors as role models, how student and instructor identities moderate this perception, and the mechanisms underlying how matched student-instructor identities impact student course outcomes.