RCN-UBE Community

I am the Director of Outreach and Strategic Engagement with the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium. I have over 25 years of experience teaching introductory biology, ecology, and evolution courses. I'm also on the leadership team of the QUBES project and I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to bring new teaching and learning resources into classrooms.

1. data science education
2. ecology
3. Evolution
4. Model Based Reasoning
5. phylogeny
6. science education

I am a structural biologist, dedicated to promoting a molecular view of biology. I enjoy visualizing biomolecular structures, learning about their interactions and understanding their functions in atomic detail. I am also interested in pedagogy, visual thinking, spatial reasoning, and topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

1. biology teaching
2. case studies
3. Molecular structure
4. molecular visualization and analysis
5. Protein Structure
6. teaching with cases
7. Using cases online
8. writing cases

I am a mathematician in the Department of Biology at the College of William and Mary.  One of my roles in the department is to strengthen the quantitative skills of biology majors.  I am also the site manager for QUBES, so if you have any questions, feel free to send me a message!

1. eco-evo
2. education
3. population dynamics
4. quant bio
5. QUBES
6. QUBES Advisory Board
7. QUBESHub Team
8. QUBES Leadership Team
9. statistics
10. theoretical ecology

Suzanne Macey, Ph.D. is the manager of the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP) and a Biodiversity Scientist at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). As the NCEP Manager, Suzanne leads the editorial processes for biodiversity conservation teaching and learning modules, the publication Lessons in Conservation, and other educational materials for the CBC. Suzanne also teaches and contributes to NCEP's training events and to curriculum development for programs in the AMNH's Education Department and Columbia University. Suzanne's biological research currently includes studies focused on the behavioral ecology, health, and conservation genetics of endangered turtle species. As part of her research projects, Suzanne mentors high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Suzanne earned a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences and a Graduate Certificate in Conservation Biology at Fordham University prior to joining the CBC team.

1. Biodiversity
2. conservation
3. ecology
4. online education
5. professional development
6. Research Coordination Network
7. turtles
8. undergraduate education

Pat is currently Faculty Development Ambassador for BioQUEST and Emeritus Faculty from Emory University! Pat Marsteller directed the Emory College Center for Science Education and was a faculty member in the department of Biology at Emory. She studied evolution of animal behavior for her MS degree at University of South Carolina and evolution and quantitative genetics for her PhD at the University of Florida.  She worked with alligators for her MS thesis, investigating whether they could use the sun, the moon and the stars to navigate. Her dissertation research focused on a quantitative genetic analysis, using with fruit flies as a model system, to investigate genetic and environmental influence on life history patterns and traits such as longevity and quantity and timing of reproduction. She has taught courses evolution, Darwin and the idea of evolution and many other courses over her 30 years of college teaching.  She also works with college and pre-college faculty on developing curriculum materials and on using active learning strategies in the teaching of science and mathematics. She is the PI of the ScienceCasenetwork and NeuroCaseNet and a helper on HITS and Molecular CaseNet.

 Pat’s grand project is to prepare Faculty of the Future to teach well, to be creative, to be excellent mentors. She believes that we all have a responsibility to educate the public about science. Her other grand project relates to increasing diversity in science...She is in charge of special programs to increase success for underrepresented groups, women and first genration students at undergraduate, graduate, postdoc and faculty levels. support for these initiatives comes from NSF, HHMI, and NIH.  She is co-PI of the Emory Initiative for Maximizing Student Development project, among many projects that support student research.

Draft Undergraduate STEM Education 2040: An Optimists Perspective

The intersecting crises of 2020 (covid, antiracist protests and climate change) finally led faculty groups and funders to a social justice agenda for STEM education. Thousands of faculty read Ibram Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist and began to realize that open education resources (OER) and open pedagogy (OP) were needed to address the racial and ethnic disparities in health, impacts of climate change, and institutional practices.  A revolution began!

Graduate and postdoctoral programs added Social Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to professional development programs.  NSF reinstated the GK12 program and created a new Graduate-Undergraduate curriculum development program.  Institutions moved from general statements about social justice and serving all students to investing in reward systems and data tools to assess progress toward a just system that serves society. All types of institutions, community colleges, liberal arts institutions and research focused institution have over these years established networks and partnerships and formal transfer agreements. Faculty tenure and promotion guidelines were revised to include public scholarship and reflection on open pedagogies and professional development in applying social justice principles.  Discipline based education faculty were hired (on tenure track) in nearly every department. Since that watershed year our faculties have become more diverse and our curricula have changed.

The movement to integrate research into STEM courses developed into a movement to include students as co-creators of curricular materials.  Faculty worked together across departmental boundaries to assess content, curricular frameworks, and applications of each course and program to society.  Science literacy, data literacy, and application to social issues took priority.

Revised materials called for all people to be represented in texts and OER materials. and current research.

As a result, now in 2040 students not only feel welcomed as learners but enabled to be content creators and researchers from the first course. From the first course, students now learn to critique and evaluate knowledge claims. Our STEM courses are better coordinated and they incorporate visualization, research design and models, but they also examine the ethics of scientific practices and the social justice implications of historical and future science and application. Our faculties are more diverse and representative and thus constantly bring new perspectives to our teaching and research missions.

Our classrooms are now more open spaces that support the evidence based active learning practices and enable collaborative teams to create new knowledge. Our institutions intersect closely with local communities and our students investigate and solve problem with local community groups. 

From the very first course, we teach students to think like scientists, to evaluate and weigh evidence, to communicate clearly and to place scientific data in context.  Instead of focusing on science as a body of knowledge, we allow students to inquire, investigate and communicate. Inquiry-based approaches such as problem-based learning (PBL) and investigative case-based learning (ICBL) have documented success in enhancing conceptual understanding and increasing skills in problem solving, critical thinking, communication and self-assessment. By using complex, authentic problems to trigger investigation in lab and library, our students develop critical thinking, problem solving, and collaborative skills. These methods allow students to experience science integrated with other disciplines such as mathematics (graphs, statistics), history (social, economic and political context of the issue), and language arts (conveying research results) and enhance their capacity for creative and responsible real-world problem solving. Inquiry science courses integrate ethical dimensions of science. Debates on cloning, DNA testing, limits of prediction, and potential perils as well as benefits of science deepen understanding for all students.  Combining such approaches with practice in communicating science to different audiences creates engaged scholars and a scientifically literate public.

We have made great strides in moving from incremental interventions to systemic, structural and lasting change. Our majors now provide a more diverse STEM workforce and generate new ideas that are improving health, quality f life and discovery for all peoples and parts of the globe.  Our non-majors leave still loving and exploring science and they learn to critique and evaluate knowledge claims about health, vaccines and evolution.  Our STEM courses are better coordinated and they incorporate visualization, research design and models, but they also examine the ethics of scientific practices and the social justice implications of past

We have not yet solved all the inequities in K-12 or undergraduate education or in health disparities in local communities, but we have come a long way.  The experiments in education are now bolder, the future looks more just, more equitable and more creative.

OK...How's that???

Prior to arriving at Emory in 1990, Pat taught at large state universities and tiny liberal arts colleges.  This experience gave her the opportunity to teach nearly every course in Biology.  She loves teaching because transmitting the joys (and trials) of the process of science to students gives them the tools for lifelong learning and discovery.  Science is not merely a body of accumulated facts and theories, but an exhilarating process of discovery.  Good teachers are constant learners, inventing, creating and discovering new ways to facilitate learning.  As her friend John Jungck says, “teachers must move from the position of sage on the stage to guide on the side.”  Learning is an active process- students are not vessels into which we pour our accumulated wisdom; they are participants is generating, constructing and linking knowledge by placing new content in the context of what they know and by developing critical analysis skills so that they can generate reasonable hypotheses, test them, analyze carefully and draw reasonable conclusions.  Good teachers and good students should “Question Authority” as the bumper sticker on her door suggests.  Don’t just believe!  Delve into it, connect, apply, and make it your own!

Pat is a member of the Biology faculty and the NBB faculty and directs the Hughes Undergraduate Science Initiative and our Emory College Center for Science Education. She is  the oldest of 11 kids.  She is married to Fred Marsteller, who is a consultant in Biostatistics and Research Design.  Her son Sean was the founding Director of LearnLink.  He and his wife now live in Canada.

1. cases and pbl
2. Evolution
3. faculty development
4. quantitative biology
5. Quantitative reasoning
6. quantitative skills

Behavioral ecologist, zoologist, professor, teacher of art-enhanced biology, observer of strange invertebrates.

1. art
2. behavioral ecology
3. biology
4. ecology
5. entomology
6. interdisciplinary education
7. Interdisciplinary STEM
8. invertebrate zoology
9. Science-Humanities Interdisciplinary Course Development
10. Zoology

Theodore Muth is an associate professor in the Biology Department at CUNY Brooklyn College. Muth received his B.S. in Biology from Haverford College in 1993, and his Ph.D. in cell biology from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1998, where he studied protein targeting in epithelial and neuronal cells in the lab of Dr. Michael Caplan. Muth went on to receive postdoctoral training at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem studying bacterial multidrug resistance transporters, and a second postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, studying DNA transfer by the plant pathogen, A. tumefaciens. As an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College I have focussed on the study of urban microbial communities, and I have lead a national initiative to provide research experiences for undergraduate students in exploring complex microbiomes using metagenomic strategies and “big data” analysis tools. My lab’s research is at the leading edge of studies on urban microbial communities, and we were recently a part of the first team to publish on the diversity of subway microbiomes (Afshinnekoo et al., 2015), and the first lab to report on the diversity of soil bacterial communities in spatially and compositionally distinct soil horizons (Joyner et al., 2019, Huot et al., 2017). Complementing these research efforts, I worked to adapt protocols and develop training resources that have allowed microbiome research to be carried out by undergraduate students in laboratory courses (Introductory Microbiology Lab). The work that I initiated in the teaching labs at Brooklyn College has been funded by the NSF and provided support to microbiome research projects at institutions across the nation involving over 5,000 undergraduates, and has lead to the formation of the Research Experiences in Microbiomes Network (REMNet), that I am currently the director of. 

1. duckweeds
2. microbiomes
3. plant bacterial pathogens
4. urban microbial communities

Sumali Pandey is an Associate Professor of Biosciences at the Minnesota State University Moorhead. She serves as the lead investigator of ImmunoReach – a Research Coordination Network focused on Undergraduate Immunology Education.  Sumali teaches immunobiology, microbiology, medical microbiology, cell culture, and introduction to public health to undergraduates, and an infectious disease course to graduate students. Her current research interests are focused on i) developing and validating a conceptual framework for undergraduate immunology education ii) investigating mechanisms underlying airway remodeling associated with repeated inhalation of Aspergillus fumigatus.

Deputy Director

Dr. Deborah Rook is an evolutionary biologist and paleontologist. She has a bachelor's degree in Biology and Evolutionary biology from Case Western Reserve University and a masters in Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology from Ohio State University, having studied evolutionary and ecological dynamics of Cenozoic mammals. For her PhD, she moved into Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focusing on dynamic interactions of the rock and fossil records. Biology education has always been a focus for her, having taught and studied pedagogical techniques throughout her graduate studies and beyond. She joined the QUBES team in September 2017 as the FMN Project Manager, where she is working with the Faculty Mentoring Networks to enhance student experiences with quantitative biology, and the Professional Development Manager as our opportunities expanded. Since September 2021, she moved to Deputy Director, where she continues to work in the professional development space but now also manages staff and assists the Executive Director with business aspects of the organization.

1. biology
2. outside academics
3. paleontology
4. STEM Education reform

Very Irish, Microbe lover, Researcher, Educator

More about me:

Davida Smyth is an Associate Professor of Microbiology at Texas A&M University in San Antonio. There she conducts research with her undergraduate team in the area of comparative microbial genomics and evolution, studying Staphylococcus aureus from animals and from humans, and is researching the role of the built environment, wastewater, and anthropogenic activity in driving antibiotic resistance, a major global health threat. She also engages in pedagogical research on improving civic and scientific literacy in biology and integrating authentic research into the curriculum to improve student engagement and success in science. She is a Senior SENCER Leadership Fellow and PULSE Fellow and Ambassador. She is Deputy Director of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement.

1. Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria
2. CUREs
3. microbiology
4. PBL
5. reading
6. Urban Microbial Ecology