I am Professor of Biology at F&M. I teach Genetics (300-level), introductory Cell & Molecular Biology (100-level), an elective called Genome Analysis, and a non-majors course called Women/Science. My research lab studies the ecology, evolution, and systematics of fungal-like microbial eukaryotes, with an emphasis on plant pathogens.

I am an Associate Professor at St. John Fisher College in the Biology department. I have a PhD from Oregon State University and a MS from University of New Hampshire, both in Zoology. I currently teach Evolution, Parasitology, Intro to Zoology, and Human Anatomy and Physiology. My research interests are in the fields of ecological genetics, parasitology, and molecular evolution, as well as pedagogical research.

Hi all.  I have been reading your biographies and am really looking forward to meeting you all soon.

I found HHMI resources some time ago, and use the Pocket Mouse video in the Intro bio class I currently teach at Dine College.  In that class, and the two semester A&P sequence I also teach, I have students calculate the mean and standard deviation of data they have collected.  The opportunity to be part of this Faculty Mentoring Network and improve those units was really exciting to me because I don't feel that the units are as successful as they could be in helping students understand the importance of data analysis and interpretation.  I also hope to develop data analysis units that can be incorporated into several courses at all Dine College campuses that will support our student assessment goals.

To tell you about the college where I work, there are going to be a lot of place names you probably won't be familiar with, but that is OK, since most people aren't.  I am a Science Faculty at Dine College in Tuba City, Arizona.  Dine College is a Tribal College on the Navajo Nation.  The main campus is in Tsaile, AZ.  Other branch campuses are located in Shiprock & Crownpoint, New Mexico and Window Rock & Chinle, AZ, all located within the Navajo Nation.  Chinle, AZ is the town of Canyon de Chelly, which you might know of.  It is Arizona's other canyon!

I taught high school biology in Chinle, AZ in the 90s.  In the 2000s I went back to school and earned a MS in Biology.  After that I did some additional graduate work, and then became adjunct faculty at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque, NM.  In January 2016 I moved to Tuba City and my job with Dine College.  My teaching load alternates between intro bio for majors and non-majors, a class I call A&P lite (one semester survey class) and a 2 semester A&P class that is part of the health career AS degree tract.  

The Navajo Nation is the largest in terms of tribal land area (27,425 square miles)  and in terms of enrolled members (>300,000 people).  The Navajo and Cherokee Nations have similar population sizes, and some sources give the nod to the Cherokee Nation for most enrolled members.  Not quite half of Navajos live on the Rez (Reservation) where they struggle with many different issues.  Tuba City borders Moenkopi, one of 12 villages located on the Hopi Rez.  The Hopi Rez (2,531 square miles) is completely surrounded by Navajo land.  There are about 19,500 Hopi tribal members.  This means that my classroom has both Navajo and Hopi students, with an occasional member of another ethnic group.

I am from Albuquerque, NM, where I have a home, and where I am spending most of my summer.   In Tuba City, I live in housing provided by my employer, as it is not possible for a non-Navajo to acquire housing on the Navajo Nation otherwise.  I live in a mobile home on campus.  Other faculty live in Flagstaff, AZ and commute three to four days per week.

When not teaching (or driving between Albuquerque and Tuba City) I love to get outdoors; cycling, hiking, backpacking, and kayaking all vie for spots on my days off.  In Albuquerque, I also get to spend time with my partner, Steve and our friends, plus our dog, cats and chickens.  It is a bit of a strange set of circumstances, but I like my job and have tried to make the most out of my new location in Arizona, exploring new places, cultures and meeting new people.

Contact infomation: nc526 "at" cornell "dot" edu

Dr. Nicole Chodkowski has been a QUBES postdoc since January 2018. Her primary mentor is Jeremy Wojdak at Radford University. Nicole’s background is in aquatic ecology. She received her Ph.D. from Ball State University for her work on host-parasite interactions and parasite effects on host nutrient recycling and metabolism in ecosystems. At QUBES, Nicole’s work is focused on planning and facilitating the faculty mentoring networks centered around adapting and sharing open educational resources for teaching quantitative skills.

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.

I have been teaching biology laboratory courses at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA for 10 years. Our biology program leans towards micro-level topics, reflected in the courses I teach: upper-level courses for our biology majors in genetics and molecular biology, cell and developmental biology, and neuroscience, as well as a research-based course (topics rotate) for our first-year students. Our labs are stand-alone, relatively small-in-size courses with every section taught directly by teaching faculty (including myself), which gives us a lot of flexibility and freedom in building the classes around research-based projects.

I semi-regularly attend the ABLE meeting (Association for Biology Laboratory Education) and always come away with ways to improve my teaching and great ideas for my courses or for outreach events. I am also working to improve my own quantitative knowledge as I work to better integrate bioinformatics, statistics, and programming into my own courses. I'm looking forward to talking with like-minded educators in this community to discuss educational practices and ideas!

At this meeting I will be helping to run a workshop with teaching materials from last year's working group (SARS-CoV-2: Understanding, Applying, and Communicating Science). I am also preparing to run a new course in the fall that will teach interdisciplinary communication through a team-based research project in computational biology, and am happy to talk strategies!

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 and spatial reasoning.

I am a  Professor in the Department of Biology, and the Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology.  I am also Associate Director for Education at the Kessler Atmospheric and Ecological Field Station.  I have taught intro biology more times than I can remember (I think I am at 70+ times), but I still love it.  Although there will be challenges, I am looking forward to teaching an online lecture to a very large class this fall.

I am an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and teach in the Biotechnology Program (BIT, biotech.ncsu.edu) at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. My research interests include molecular microbiology, metagenomics, high-throughput discovery, epidemiology, history of disease, science education, and outreach activities. I am also interested in teaching with technology and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

I have been an Assistant Professor in Environmental Science at Mount St. Mary's University since the fall of 2021. Previously, I was a CAS Diversity Post Doctoral Fellow in the Integrative Biology Department of Oklahoma State University from 2018-2021. I worked within small OK reservoirs, collecting water quality data and measuring the phyto and zooplankton communities in order to better quantify seasonal turnover in old and young reservoirs. I received a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology under the direction of Dr. Lawrence J. Weider at the University of Oklahoma. My working thesis involved using theory and experimentation to better understand how population structure influences community properties and stability. I am using Daphnia as a model organism, linking their life-history traits to communities through size-distributions.

I joined QUBES in 2019 because I am passionate about integrating experimental design and analysis (and the coding skills that go with it) into course curricula and undergraduate research experiences. I've grown very fond of using Swirl with R as a self-paced tool to ease coding anxiety and to scaffold analyses in course materials.

In a resting egg (aka aquatic nutshell), I get excited over equations and graphs, while trying to keep myself grounded in real systems.

Melissa Haswell is currently the Associate Dean of Science and Mathematics at Delta College in University Center, Michigan.  Her primary responsibilities as Associate Dean are to support academic management and operations of the Science and Mathematics Divisions and support the Academic Deans in furthering the academic mission and direction of the College to help ensure student success in degree completion, successful transfer to a university, and/or entry-level job employment or career advancement.  From 2008-2021, Melissa was a full-time faculty member in the science department at Davenport University (Michigan). She has 17 years of experience in STEM education that emphasizes case-based teaching, the incorporation of authentic research experiences in undergraduate biology courses, and decolonizing the higher education curriculum. Melissa is also is a Higher Education Ambassador for HHMI BioInteractive (2017-present), President of the Association of College and University Biology Educators (ACUBE), a member of working groups 5&6 of Accelerating System Change Network (ASCN), and is involved with the Kirtland Warbler Census for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Past research projects have included winter bird-feeder use of the White-breasted Nuthatch and dominance hierarchy in Black-capped Chickadees, nesting and reproductive behavior of Eastern Bluebirds, House Wrens, and Tree Swallows, and work as a research assistant/technician on the Tittabawassee River Ecological Risk Assessment with Michigan State University.  Melissa received her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Alma College and completed two master’s degrees (Health Promotion and Conservation Biology), as well as her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in biology education from Central Michigan University.

Research @ a CC on a budget

Scaffolding Research Skills

Stacey has taught at Lane Community College full time since 1996. She primarily teaches the life science majors with an emphasis on zoology the third quarter. She co-taught Honors classes. Many biology classes at Lane incorporate undergraduate research, and her zoology students have been doing student-designed projects since 2013. Stacey was president of NABT (National Association of Biology Teachers) in 2014 and currently serves on NABT's the Intro Bio Taskforce. Stacey is co-chair of the Gordon Research Conference - Undergraduate Biology Education scheduled for June 2021. She started attending BioQUEST Summer Workshops in 1999 and currently volunteers as the Two Year Outreach director.

Twitter: @StaceyKiser

Instagram: slkiser2002

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!

I am a Professor of Biology at Raritan Valley Community College where I teach General Biology (for majors), Genetics and Cellular & Molecular Biology. 

Pat Marsteller directed the Emory College Center for Science Education and is 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.

I am a microbiologist with a strong interest in undergraduate research and education. I am interested in developing initiatives that create a sense of beloning and science identity while increasing students quantitative skills and exposure to interdisciplinary, including the intersection of "omic" technologies in the field of microbiology. 

Universal Design for Learning Consultant at BioQUEST.

I have worked on both the QUBES and BioQUEST projects out of Pittsburgh, PA since 2016. In these roles I work to support initiatives around Open Educational Resources and the design and implementation of professional development that focuses on Universal Design for Learning.

Email: hco1 "at" pitt "dot" edu

Name badge: Hayley Orndorf

Contact information: mphillips AT flmnh DOT ufl DOT edu Twitter: @StellarSquirrel

Molly is a biologist with a background in evolution, ecology, and natural history, which includes five years of experience working in natural history collections. As the Education and Outreach Coordinator, Molly is responsible for coordinating and implementing the E&O activities of iDigBio and communicating and facilitating coordination and networking among the TCNs in order to promote, encourage, develop, and implement relevant E&O and related Broader Impact activities.

Deputy Director
@DebRookPaleo

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.

I am the General Biology assistant professor at St. Lawrence University, a small private liberal arts college located in Canton, NY. Prior to my current position,  I worked extensively as a biomedical researcher on the molecular biology and genomics of the malaria parasite and currently interested in studying the microbiome of soil and plant roots with application to sustainable agriculture. In my previous classes, I have implemented CUREs such as Tiny Earth, PARE (Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment), and MGAN (Microbial Genome Annotation Network). I hope to develop a CURE for microbiome analysis using the minIon sequencer.

I am a CC-Bio INSITES community college biology scholar. This is a network to support inquiry into teaching and education scholarship (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward)  (http://bioquest.org/projects/) fellow and an active participant in Bio QUEST (http://bioquest.org/), CCURI (http://ccuri.org) annual workshops.

Promoting Student Success Using Supplemental InstructionNational Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD)-Innovation Abstracts, Volume XLI, No. 39 | October 17, 2019 

Few of my case studies are as follows:

a) Summer time - ice cream time: Lactase Persistence in Humans is being published at National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, University at Buffalo (June 2016),

b)Bioengineering a Heart -- Bioengineering a Heart. HAPS Educator 21 (Suppl.2): 15-19. doi: doi: 10.21692/haps.2017.0341

https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.hapsweb.org/resource/resmgr/educator_archive/HAPSEducator2017SpecialEditi.pdf (November 2017).  

c) https://qubeshub.org/qubesresources/publications/1199/1 Vemu, S. (2019). Adapted Value of Mistakes. Biology Students Math Attitudes and Anxiety Program (BIOMAAP): a QUBES Faculty Mentoring Network, QUBES Educational Resources. doi:10.25334/Q4DT8C

d) Histology Personal Trainer: Identifying Tissue Types Using Critical Thinking and Metacognition Prompts

J Microbiol Biol Educ2019 Aug 30;20(2):20.2.44.  doi: 10.1128/jmbe.v20i2.1791

e) Feel the Burn -- Biochemical Testing and the Integumentary System - https://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/collection/detail.html?case_id=1138&id=1138

Few of my workshop presentations are as follows:

a) Promoting success in First year students through multicultural engagement at Midwest First Year Conference http://www.mfyc.org/pdf/MFYC_EDUCATION_SESSIONS_SCHEDULE_2015.pdf

b) Metacognition workshop based on the poster presentation at NIU for Minorities Promise scholars. Promoting Success with Critical Thinking and Metacognition in the Science Classroom for First-Year Students Utilizing Supplemental Instruction https://nabt.org/files/galleries/NABT2017ProgramGuide_web-0002.pdf.  

c) OLI conference with Julia Spears and CTP fellows at NIU https://secure.onlinelearningconsortium.org/conference/2014/blended/best-practices-transforming-course-blended-community-improved-student-metacognition 

d) http://www.niu.edu/cseas/_pdf/bbflyer.pdf.pdf: Talk on Microbes, Borneo mud and Antibiotic Resistance for Center of Southeast Asia studies. 

e) Workshop on Leveraging various opportunities for innovation and network building in the scholarship of community college teaching at 2018 Bio-Link Summer Fellows Forum, University of Berkeley, Clark-Kerr Campus, CA. https://www.bio-link.org/home2/event/2018-bio-link-summer-fellows-forum

f) Assessing Global Awareness in Associate Level Microbiology: Adapting Case Studies and the AAC&U VALUE Rubrics To Examine the Global Challenges of Mosquito Borne Disease". (Intersection: A Journal at the Intersection of Assessment and Learning in press

g) https://www.nsta.org/journal-college-science-teaching/journal-college-science-teaching-septemberoctober-2020/identifying TWO-YEAR COMMUNITY


Identifying Differences in Learning Strategies by Demographics and Course Grade in a Community College Context Journal of College Science Teaching—September/October 2020 (Volume 50, Issue 1)

I am also engaged in Faculty Mentoring Networks (FMN) 2016-2017 that includes face to face workshop experience at Annual Bio QUEST conference with a supportive long term community interaction on the QUBES site. https://qubeshub.org/dataviewer/view/publication: dsl/prj_db_223_8e0c85da2f67271a1f934686266a34efc4b9ee31/? V=4  

"Its only skin deep!" is a working group branching from the 2016 National Academies Special Topics Summer Institute on Quantitative Biology. This group is working specifically on the following levels of problem solving: a) Correlation of skin pigmentation with latitude and Vitamin D deficiencies. b) Physiology and biochemistry of melanin synthesis and trafficking c) Regulatory genes involved in process of melanin expression d) Vitamin D deficiency, skin pigmentation related to genotypes.

 I am interested in ethno pharmacology as it relates to my Ph.D. work from Chicago Medical School (role of antibiotics in the regulation of transcription in yeast/cancer cell prototype). While teaching a graduate course in Pharmacology (Biology department at NIU as an adjunct), we piloted Pharmacology- active learning exercises with Dr.Lisa Freeman (Pharmacologist when I met her in 2011). I have some interest in adding some chapters on ethno pharmacology to the book as well. https://titles.cognella.com/pharmacology-for-allied-personnel-978162661998

I have deep interest in the exchange of information and understandings about people's use of plants, fungi, animals, microorganisms and minerals and their biological and pharmacological effects based on the principles established through international conventions.

Many of our valuable drugs of today (e.g., atropine, ephedrine, tubocurarine, digoxin, reserpine) came into use through the study of indigenous remedies. During my postdoctoral research, we continued to use plant-derived drugs (e.g., morphine, taxol, physostigmine, quinidine, emetine, vancomycin) as prototypes to develop more effective and less toxic medicinals.