To maintain recruitment and retention, biology teachers face the challenge of finding relatable role models for their students. Our ever-increasing scientific knowledge has been facilitated by people from many different backgrounds, identities, and experiences. However, textbooks and lectures typically present researchers as one-dimensional people that live only to perform science. Highlighted scientists are also overwhelmingly members of majority and privileged backgrounds and groups. The lesson includes materials that will help students create their own slide deck of information about the research and outside interests of scientists at their own institution. The lesson also includes materials that can be used to help initiate discussions about representation and inclusion in science. The lesson introduces students to the research that is being done on their own campus as a way to humanize researchers. The lesson allows students to progress beyond being passive consumers of resources to themselves identifying relatable role models/role models from marginalized groups/backgrounds/identities. In general, the lesson helped students make personal connections to scientists at their institution, humanized scientists, that it made professors less intimidating, and increased their reported confidence in their ability to do research in the future. We provide templates, rubrics, and scaffolding materials from an undergraduate introductory course that instructors can directly implement to engage students in discovering the human side of the researchers on their own campuses and beyond.

Presentation on Universal Design for Learning at the 2019 BioQUEST & QUBES Summer Workshop

Slides and materials for the STEM Inclusive Teaching Practices Webinar Series: Universal Design for Learning

Video recordings (with captions), transcript, and chat for the STEM Inclusive Teaching Practices Webinar Series: Universal Design for Learning.

Presentation on Universal Design for Learning at the 2022 SIMIODE EXPO

Three resources for faculty interested in an introduction to Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

This activity supports instructors in revising materials to incorporate Universal Design for Learning checkpoints.

The Revising Social & Environmental Justice Open Educational Resources through UDL and Accessibility Lenses Working Group met during the Fall 2021 semester as part of the BIOME Institute. This resource includes a lightning talk describing our activities and plans going forward.

This activity guides faculty through analyzing a resource using the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines.

Two activities for introducing Universal Design for Learning to a faculty audience

A tool for analyzing a resource's alignment to CAST's Universal Design for Learning Guidelines

This framework, developed by ISKME in partnership with SERC, provides a practical reference for curators and authors of STEM OER, with 23 accessibility criteria, or elements, to reference as they curate, design and adapt materials to be accessible.

The Ciliate Genomics Consortium (CGC) employs an integrative teaching and research model that combines both inquiry-driven class laboratory activities and collaborative consortium pedagogies to advance faculty research.

There is a growing call to decolonize curricula in academia, including in scientific disciplines. In the biology classroom, this includes highlighting a diverse array of scientists and illuminating injustice and exploitation carried out by Eurocentric biologists and medical professionals. Despite this general roadmap, literature presenting and assessing classroom modules on decolonizing science is lacking. Here, I present an activity designed to shed light on the deep, historical relationship between natural history collections and the exploitation of slaves and Indigenous peoples and encourage students to critically evaluate how society influences science. Due to COVID-19, this activity was conducted remotely and included two synchronous discussion sessions and three asynchronous homework activities for Mammalogy students. Assignments were evaluated for student outcomes including reflections on their previous educational experiences related to the unjust history of science and engagement with decolonial theory. In the four homework questions in which students could interpret and answer from either a biological or decolonial perspective, 84% of students offered at least one response consistent with decolonial theory. Based on student responses, this three-week module successfully engaged upper-level biology students in decolonial thinking.

Primary image: A blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitis) skull collected from South Africa for the zoology museum collection in 1984. Image courtesy of Phil Myers, animaldiversity.org, Creative Commons.

Runoff in urban areas is an increasingly important issue when it comes to water quality. It is a major hydrologic issue in New York City, as urban infrastructure creates excess runoff and impervious surfaces decrease the infiltration rate of land surfaces. This excess runoff, which often times carries with it pollutants and contaminants, has proven to create water quality issues. It has become ever more critical to try to mitigate the influx of runoff into our waterways. Urbanization increases runoff, and in NYC 64% of the area is impervious. In this module students will explore green roofs as a potential solution to the environmental impacts of increased precipitation brought on by climate change. They will evaluate data collected from studies on 15 green roofs from different areas of the US and other countries, as well as historical precipitation data from Central Park in NY to illustrate how precipitation patterns are changing and if we need to use green infrastructure, such as green roofs, to combat the symptoms of climate change. Students will also use Model My Watershed , a watershed-modeling web app, to analyze real land use data, model storm-water runoff and water-quality i

Traditional Ecological Knowledge is based on deep understanding of systems from observations made over hundreds to thousands of years. This resource connects Traditional Ecological Knowledge to modern conservation through media and primary literature interpretation. The adaptation of this research aims to link the material to the ecological concept of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and to highlight ecologists whose careers have focused on the concept.