In this newsletter:

- Interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion in biology education?  Attend the 2019 iEMBER Conference.

- Rene Begay and Krystal Tsosie will be presenting at the 2019 QUBES/BioQUEST Summer Workshop! 

- HITS 2019 Summer workshops at Elon! Save the date: June 10-12! 

- Gateways 2019 Call for Participation (Abstracts due April 29; Full submissions due May 6) 

- QUBES Near You: Members of Team QUBES invite you to connect with them at these upcoming conferences 

- Summer Undergraduate Research Experience in Interdisciplinary Computational Biology 

- Call for Presenters: ESA Education Section sponsors presenters at 11th REEFS workshop 

- ROW Recap: Browse the outstanding QUBES resources recently featured in the Resource of the Week (ROW)

- Participate in the Bringing Conversations on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Data Science to the Environmental Sciences conference 

Interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion in biology education?  Attend the 2019 iEMBER Conference.

The Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) network is hosting their next conference on April 8-9 at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, MO.  iEMBER is an interdisciplinary group of biologists, biology education researchers, social psychologists, and diversity advocates working on solving issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in biology education. You are encouraged to attend this conference if you are interested in any of those issues.

Learn more about the 2019 iEMBER Conference.
 
If you want more information on iEMBER, read their new publication in CBE-LSE.

Travel fund requests are currently being accepted.

Please contact Michael Moore at michael_e_moore@baylor.edu with questions.

Rene Begay and Krystal Tsosie will be presenting at the 2019 QUBES/BioQUEST Summer Workshop!

The 2019 QUBES/BioQUEST Summer Workshop will be held on July 14-19, 2019 at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA.  In this workshop we will explore how to build on the ways data is currently used in the classroom to incorporate the emerging field of data science.  Look for applications to attend the summer workshop to open soon.  In the meantime, if you are interested in attending, please subscribe to receive updates.      

The schedule includes a lineup of engaging speakers that will share exciting ideas and information with workshop participants throughout the week.  Over the next couple of months, we’ll be featuring some of the workshop speakers in the QUBES newsletter.  Learn about this month’s featured speakers, Rene Begay and Krystal Tsosie, below.  View a complete list of speakers.  

Rene Begay, University of Colorado Denver

Rene Begay, M.S., is (Diné/Navajo) an Indigenous geneticist. She obtained her Masters degree in Clinical Science at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado studying genetic mutations associated with dilated cardiomyopathy. Currently, she is a Research Assistant at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health (CAIANH) at the University of Colorado Denver. Rene is currently working with the Navajo Nation to generate a genetic research policy that is specific to helping the Navajo people engage in genetic research in a culturally relevant manner. Rene is also a faculty member of the SING consortium. She joins Krystal Tsosie to represent the SING (Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics) Consortium: https://sing.igb.illinois.edu/

Krystal Tsosie, Vanderbilt University

Krystal Tsosie (Diné/Navajo), MPH, MA, is currently completing a PhD in Genomics and Health Disparities at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She also co-leads the Genetics and Preeclampsia Study within the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian Nation in Belcourt, North Dakota. As an Indigenous geneticist-ethicist, Krystal advocates strongly for genomic and data sovereignty and is currently assisting the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal nation with instituting their own policies for data privacy, biobanking, and building research capacity. She joins Rene Begay to represent the SING (Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics) Consortium: https://sing.igb.illinois.edu/

HITS 2019 Summer workshops at Elon! Save the date: June 10-12!

High-throughput Discovery Science & Inquiry-based Case Studies for Today’s Students (HITS) is an NSF RCN-UBE that seeks to improve student quantitative skills and participation in high-throughput discovery.  HITS is excited to announce that the next HITS 2019 summer workshop will be hosted by Elon University on June 10-12th.

Become a HITS HT Researcher!

HITS is also taking applications for grad students and postdocs developing and using high-throughput (HT) approaches. HT Fellows will share their research and explain their approaches at the workshop. The application can be found here: https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/hits/get_involved.  Please share the opportunity with your students and colleagues!

Gateways 2019 Call for Participation (Abstracts due April 29; Full submissions due May 6)

Call for Participation: Gateways 2019 (September 23–25, San Diego, California) is now accepting submissions of papers, demos, tutorials, and panels (2–4 pages) on the topic of gateways for science, engineering, or other disciplines. Gateways are user-friendly interfaces to scientific computing, data, and other domain-specific resources to support research and education.

Topics may include their design, use, impact, development processes, sustainability, best practices, or any other aspect that you think fellow gateway creators or users will find interesting to learn. We also welcome educational topics directed toward the next generation of gateway creators. In addition, this year Gateways 2019 is co-located with the eScience conference. The two conferences will offer shared sessions and connected registration.

Abstracts are due April 29, and full submissions are due May 6, 2019. A poster session deadline (open to all attendees) will be August 15. Read more details in the Call for Participation: http://sciencegateways.org/gateways2019/call

QUBES Near You

In QUBES Near You, we let you know which upcoming conferences or meetings the members of the QUBES team will be attending in case you’d like to connect with them.  Members of Team QUBES are always looking to meet others who have a passion for quantitative biology education.  See where they’ll be in March and April... and don’t forget to ask them for a QUBES sticker!     

From left to right: Sam Donovan (Director of OER), Carrie Diaz Eaton (Director of QUBES Consortium), Kristin Jenkins (Director of BioQUEST), Drew LaMar (Director of Cyberinfrastructure), and Jeremy Wojdak (Director of Professional Development).  

Summer Undergraduate Research Experience in Interdisciplinary Computational Biology

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

May 27–August 5, 2019

Highlights:

• $5750 stipend + housing + meal plan
• Travel allowance up to $500
• Coding boot camp
• Research in computing and life science
• Chattanooga is a great outdoor city.

Online application: https://tinyurl.com/iCompBioREU

Application materials: A personal statement, transcripts, a resume, and 2 support letters.

For more information, visit https://utc.edu/iCompBio or contact icompbio@utc.edu. 

Call for Presenters: ESA Education Section sponsors presenters at 11th REEFS workshop

11th Resources for Ecology Education – Fair & Share (REEFS) Preconference Workshop
2019 ESA Annual Meeting,  Louisville, Kentucky
Sunday, August 11, 2019, 12:00 PM-5:00 PM

The ESA Education Section will cover the workshop registration fee ($30) for up to 20 ESA Education Section members who present at REEFS.

Resources for Ecology Education – Fair and Share (REEFS) is an annual workshop held during ESA’s Annual Meeting. Since 2008, it has been organized jointly by ESA’s Office of Education and Diversity and the ESA Education Section.

Call for Presentations

Teaching ideas at all levels of development are welcome. For those who are developing a new activity, this is an opportunity for you to get immediate feedback. For those with tested activities, come share your teaching resource. We are especially looking for ideas that help advance the core concepts and competencies embodied in the Four Dimensional Ecology Education(4DEE) Framework and Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education. We welcome your participation as education leaders!

For information on REEFS and details for presentations, please visit: https://www.esa.org/esa/education-and-diversity/reefs/

ROW Recap

Each week we feature an outstanding educational resource that is freely available on QUBES.  All resources featured in the Resource of the Week (ROW) have been plucked from the large and growing collection of open education resources (OER) that are freely available on QUBES.  Most resources have open licenses, allowing you to easily find, use, and adapt the materials.  Each ROW includes a brief description of the education resource along with related materials and opportunities that might be of interest to faculty.  

In this ROW Recap, we’ve rounded up the last 5 resources featured in the ROW since our last newsletter.  Browse the titles below and click on the images to visit the resource featured in the ROW. 

Subscribe to the ROW.  You do not need a QUBES account to subscribe!

Browse all past ROWs.

Browse the entire OER Collection.

This resource is an activity in which students work through a chi-squared test of independence between two categorical variables in Swirl, an interactive platform for learning and teaching R in the RStudio console.

This module focuses on the dispersal of seeds from trees in fragmented tropical forests. Students use data from published studies to understand patterns of seed dispersal and apply these ideas to the design of a conservation area.

This resource is an R Shiny app that contains simulation models for genetic drift, gene flow, and natural selection, the three core population-level processes that can lead to evolution.

In this exercise, students will gain insight into the process of building an occurrence-based species distribution model (sdm) by investigating the distribution of painted turtles (Chrysemys picta), a semi-aquatic species that is widespread throughout North America.

This resource is a bioinformatics lab in which students learn how to use DNA Subway (http://www.dnasubway.org), an online educational bioinformatics platform that bundles research-grade bioinformatics tools, high-performance computing, and databases into workflows with an easy-to-use interface.

Participate in the Bringing Conversations on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Data Science to the Environmental Sciences conference