Assignment 1 – Attendee Introductions
Ana Maria Barral
National University, Costa Mesa, CA
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I teach mainly microbiology and general biology (majors and non-majors), although have also
taught molecular biology, anatomy, and physiology.
My microbiology students are mostly pre-allied health (especially pre-nursing). The majors
biology students are usually heading towards a biology degree, although lately I have had a number of
students in the BS Radiation Therapy program. The non-majors general biology class is actually a GE
course, so it is very popular. It is often the one and only science class that students take, and therefore I
see it as an opportunity for them to gain appreciation of biology.
My students are mainly non-traditional students- mean age tends to be high 20-low 30, with many
working students and veterans.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
Coming from a research science background I am still learning how to evaluate student learning
and how to analyze the results of teaching interventions. Over the past years I have incorporated many
novel teaching modalities and approaches, but have not published yet. I am specially looking forward
meeting a group of like-minded people with whom share ideas and experiences.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I like outdoor activities, especially trail running and paddleboarding; love to travel and experience
new places and cultures, photography, and all kinds of music. Oh, and I am a huge Game of Thrones
fan...
As for book, I am finishing "Quiet, the hidden power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking"
by Susan Cain, it is a great book and really applies to me, as I am more on the introvert side.
1
Kimberly Bjorgo-Thorne
West Virginia Wesleyan College, Buckhannon, WV
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I teach a general education requirement non-majors course called Environmental Science every
semester. The focus is on sustainability and human interactions with the environment. The class ranges
across all backgrounds and preparation levels, and includes a number of self-proclaimed "sciencephobic" and "math-phobic" students.
My majors course load includes Ecology, Vertebrate Zoology, Natural Resource Management,
Spatial Resource Analysis, and our senior capstone course. These courses average 8-12 students, with
18 being the maximum number of students. These students have all had basic statistics, lab-report
writing, and some library research skills before I see them. We hone those skills through review papers,
literature critiques, data analysis using R and Excel, computer mapping (GIS), and field work.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I hope to bring home the skills needed to create a research project that will allow me to assess
the relevance to and effectiveness of ecology-based research projects on retention of first-generation
Appalachian college students. Ideally I would like to collaborate with colleagues at other Appalachian
PUIs to conduct a meta-analysis of their data and draft a manuscript.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I am a spatial ecologist by training, and I enjoy hiking, fishing, and camping. I am also active
with equestrian activities. I am currently reading Teaching Naked by Jose Bowen, although it's the time of
year where it is hard to find time to read for fun.
2
Jennifer Brigati
Maryville College, Maryville, TN
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I teach at a small, private, liberal arts college, so my teaching duties are quite varied. I teach
BIO221 Genetics (required for all biology and biochemistry majors) every fall, SCI150 Principles of
Scientific Investigation: Microbiology (for non-science majors and nursing students) every spring, BIO355
Microbiology (for biology/biochemistry majors) every other spring, and BIO357 Immunology (for
biology/biochemistry majors) every other spring. The other courses in my schedule are variable, and may
include First Year Seminar: Medicine and Making Babies (for first semester freshman – includes
academic advising), SCI350 Human Genetic and Reproductive Technology (for non-science majors), and
Senior Seminar: Obesity (open to any senior). In addition, Maryville College requires all students to
complete a two semester Senior Study (thesis), so I advise several of these projects each semester.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I became interested in biology education research as a result of attending ASMCUE several
times. I am trained as a microbial geneticist, but through a learn-as-we-go approach a colleague and I
managed to do some research that was accepted for publication in JMBE. Through the whole process, I
felt like I had no clue what I was doing, so I mainly want to gain some background knowledge and basic
skills in biology education research so I will feel a bit more confident. I am also seeking to gain skills in
qualitative research, because numerous knowledgeable people have told me that is what I should be
doing at a small institution like mine, but I don’t really know anything about it. I am not relying solely on
the research institute to provide me with these skills; I actually have a sabbatical for 2015-2016 and I will
be doing some post-doctoral work with Dr. Elisabeth Schussler, Director of Biology Teaching and
Learning at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. I am hoping that the combination of the BSP
Research Residency and the postdoctoral training will help me to complete meaningful research at my
home institution as we begin to make changes to our program to better meet the goals provided by Vision
and Change.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I am an avid runner, and have run 25 marathons and countless shorter races. Since my
sabbatical will allow me a bit more travel flexibility, I am planning to run 12 marathons between June ’15
and May ’16. I am also president of my local running club, the Foothill Striders
(www.foothillstriders.org). I am a Mom to two boys, age 4 and 6, and when the weather cooperates we
love to paddleboard, canoe, kayak, or just swim in the local lakes and rivers.
Most recently I read Dean Karnazes’ Ultramarathon Man. I probably wouldn’t have purchased it
on my own, but a friend passed it along to me when she was done reading it and it was very
inspiring. The last book I purchased was Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, which was more religious
than my usual reading choices, but had a very powerful message about how to find happiness no matter
what your circumstances. Most of my reading selections have to do with science, happiness, or running.
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Natalia Caporale
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I am the lead and sole instructor in a variety of lecture and lab courses. In particular, for this
project I am focusing on a lecture course: Cell Biology. The students in this course are very diverse, with
a large proportion of them being transfer students and having Cell Bio as one of their first courses at
SFSU. Many of our students are first generation students and we also have a very high proportion of
Hispanic students.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
What I hope to take home is a more clear understanding of the steps to take to convert a
research idea into an actionable research project. Furthermore, I look forward to meeting other faculty
who are interested in undergraduate science education and to form a network of colleagues with whom I
could continue discussions and potentially collaborate in the future.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
Interests outside of the classroom... I love movies, hanging out and chatting over a cup of coffee
or a glass of wine (red!) and just going for a walk. I tend to work a lot, so in my free time I enjoy to do
things that allow me to relax and let go. With respect to books that I have read recently, it spreads among
my passions: (1) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon and (2) The Strain by
Guillermo del Toro.
4
Benjamin Clegg
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I am relatively early into my teaching career. I was initially charged with multiple biology gen ed
courses for non-science majors, including Intro to Environmental Biology, History of Life, and Global
Change Biology & Sustainability.
More recently I have become a part of the team that teaches our University's massive 600student introductory biology course for biology majors. As a member of this teaching team I have been
involved in a major overhaul of how we are teaching this course to an increasingly student-centered,
active classroom, and more recently including a flipped classroom design that introduces students to
basic content in interactive, online video modules before they come to class.
One of the many challenges we are facing in this course is the great diversity of students that are
taking this course, ranging from freshman declared biology majors (~40%), to students whose major
specifically requires this course (~40%) to junior and senior biology students who chose to skip this
required course till late in their college career (~5%), to upper-level students in other sciences that are
taking this course to brush up on their biology for subject exams for grad and professional schools
(~10%), to students that are taking this course as their basic gen ed requirement (~5%).
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
As part of the current teaching team I have become increasingly exposed to student-centered
teaching approaches and the use of in-class group activities and case studies. Over the last couple of
years we have begun to implement an assessment plan to help us gauge the effectiveness of the reforms
we have implemented. My ultimate goal is to start up an educational research program in our unit and to
contribute to the educational literature. Being a novice at educational research, I have found asking
manageable questions and designing rigorous assessment plans a challenge. I am looking forward to
gain skills from attending the Research Institute to become a more self-observant and reflective teacher,
and to gain the skills and confidence needed to begin some exploratory forays into educational research
with our course.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I love hiking and generally emerging myself in the outdoors. One of my great love affairs is with
northern Alaska, where I have done much of my field work in the past, and whose vast landscapes keep
pulling me back to.
My other great love is for deep-time paleontology and I engage in fossil collecting and fossil
preparation in my free time as often as time permits. My most recent book has been on the cultures and
myths of Alaskan Native cultures.
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Pratima Darr
Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, GA
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
Earlier in my teaching days, I taught mainly microbiology and that too, with a medical emphasis.
Over the years though I’ve become passionate about emphasizing the importance of microbes as
benefactors rather than agents of disease and have gotten in to teaching mostly general biology and of
late, mostly non-majors. I’ve become solidly committed to general biology part II (ecology emphasis) as a
result of undergoing internationalization training (internationalization is our Quality Enhancement Plan
(QEP) target at Georgia Gwinnett College) specifically for implementation in that class.
My students are mainly youth with even some dual enrollment students every semester though I
have about 10% non-traditional students as well. Our student body consists mainly of underprivileged
students from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. A large proportion of the students are first-generation
and/or are children of recent immigrants. Our students tend to work a lot too so there is a high level of
juggling work and going to school full time.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I’m relatively new to active learning but the internationalization training I underwent in 2013-2014
launched me in to teaching mainly a supportive version of flipped classes as I’ve been teaching nonmajors primarily. As a rare individual teaching a science class that is internationalized I question the
success of my endeavors to implement this particular angle of citizen science. I’d like to learn how to
measure the effectiveness of my efforts by doing well-designed and controlled studies on my
internationalized class. Of course, I’d like to also carry this over to other classes I teach.
I look forward to learning from a community of individuals who are trying new things and would
like to have and share measurable outcomes. I’m excited to be a part of this scholarly community and
hope to form lasting connections that will enable all of us to develop as effective educators who embrace
the challenges of our increasingly uncertain world.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I love enjoying nature in quiet and non-obstructive ways including strolls, hikes and lazing in the
sun while observing the doings of all the natural kingdoms around me. I also love learning about how the
world of man functions through exploring other cultures. Literature has been a great doorway to these
worlds so I love to read both fiction and non-fiction. Time to read is scarce so the last non-academic book
I read was during the Xmas break, a novel titled, “Women of the Silk” by Gail Tsukiyama.
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David Gondek
Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
FALL
o Freshman Biology (120 students) - ~25% diverse population, 60% women
o Freshman Biology Lab sections (40students)
o Undergraduate research (5-8 students) – ranging from 200-400 level with an independent
required research project for all Biology students at the 300 level.
SPRING
o Microbiology or Immunology in alternating years (16-20students) – 10% diverse
population, 80% women – Mostly Seniors and Juniors
o Microbiology Lab section
o Undergraduate research (5-8students) – same as above
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
In the large freshman Biology course we are having an issue with attrition from the major,
particularly amongst students which classify themselves as a minority. We have been working with
different techniques to increase levels of engagement in the large class setting. We foster discussions
amongst groups, utilize clickers for formative feedback, self-analysis with exam wrappers, and group
based problem solving with “real world” problems. From this Institute, I hope to learn additional
strategies for engagement in the large class format. In addition, I would like to discuss the which data to
track in order to determine if our course changes are yielding significant gains in academic performance
as well as student personal development.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
Outside the classroom I enjoy spending time with my kids. Camping in the mountains
(Adirondacks) and getting outside for hikes, fishing, etc. During the winter we like to do alpine skiing
around the area. Recently I have been reading “Creating Significant Learning Experiences” by L. Dee
Fink, “Teaching Naked” by Jose’ Antonio Bowen, and “Game of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin.
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Marisa Isaacson
Pace University-NYC, New York City, NY
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I teach introductory biology, genetics, and cellular and molecular biology laboratory classes. I am
also the coordinator for the capstone class in our department, Introduction to Research in the Biological
Sciences. This is a writing-enhanced class in which the students write an NSF-style research grant and
present/defend their proposal to the class at the end of the semester. I also teach elective classes,
including cancer cell biology, virology (my area of expertise), and I will likely take over the immunology
lecture/lab course next year as well.
Our students are varied. Most are traditional students but we also have many transfer and postbac/non-matriculated students who are taking classes to finish up pre-requisites for some type of
professional school. We have very few students who go on to medical, veterinary, dental or graduate
school instead; most students apply to PA, optometry, physical therapy schools, etc. As we are located in
New York City, not surprisingly, many of our students come from very diverse backgrounds and we also
have a lot of first generation college students.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I am relatively new to teaching (this is my 2 nd year at Pace, 3rd year teaching) and although I am
aware of and regularly practice high-impact teaching practices I have no real proof that these methods
are effective. I’d like to learn more about how to set up a proper educational study so that it is publishable.
Also, I’d like to become more aware of what types of studies have already been done so I that can be
sure I’m planning a novel study.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I have an almost 3 year old so my interests outside the classroom mostly revolve around her. We
also bought a house less than a year ago so much of my free time is spent on home-improvement
projects. However, I do enjoy hiking (except for the ticks!) the beautiful Hudson Valley (I live only a few
minutes from the Appalachian Trail), gardening, cooking, and reading. I think the last book I read (other
than a children’s book) was probably Gone Girl and I am currently trying to finish Station Eleven.
8
Samantha Parks
Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I teach a wide variety of students (bio and non-bio majors; pre-professional, research-oriented,
undergraduate, graduate, post-baccalaureate and transient) at Georgia State University. GSU is a large,
urban campus in the heart of downtown Atlanta. My primary teaching responsibilities include Introductory
Biology (Majors and Non-Majors), Introductory Cell and Molecular Biology, Cell and Molecular Biology
(undergraduate and graduate), Cell and Molecular Biology Lab (undergraduate and graduate),
Microbiology and the Research Seminar. I have also developed coursework for Microbial Ecology and a
Human Microbiome Seminar.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I am most interested in evaluating the impact of non-traditional (didactic lecture) in both small and
large (145+ student) courses. Specifically, I am interested in the value and impact of case studies in
teaching. Following some of the presentations at ASMCUE 2014, I began implementing case studies for
interest value in my courses. Now, I am eager to explore the efficacy of such cases and determine the
effect on longer-term retention and academic success in the students that are using the cases in our
coursework. In my current courses, I use cases as part of class activities, lecture and discussion. I then
incorporate the cases into further activities, exams and written proposals. I am interested in developing a
research study that will tease out the educational benefits of case studies in the courses that I teach, such
that I can incorporate best practices into my teaching and improve appropriate (and creative) assessment
in my courses via the case studies.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
Outside of the classroom, I enjoy a good cup of tea, yoga, reading, spending time with my family
and keeping up with my twin six year old boys! I am the advisor for the Intown Atlanta Parents of
Multiples Group and am working with the boys' elementary school to help them earn STEM certification. I
am a soccer fan, and already have season tickets for when Atlanta gets their MLS team. In the English
Premier League, I am a Chelsea fan (and they are having a fantastic season!). One of my guilty
pleasures is that I am a Parrothead and have spent many nights at Jimmy Buffett concerts.
I tend to read mostly science fiction, steampunk or (bad) British humor. The last book that I
finished was The Long Earth by Sir Terry Pratchett (who sadly passed recently due to Alzheimer's, or as
he called it The Embuggerance) and Stephen Baxter. The book is part of a series which details
mankind's expansion to stepwise worlds, alternate patterns of evolution and a somewhat dystopian view
of mankind's impact on the Datum (main) Earth. I am currently reading The Abominable Showman by
Robert Rankin (my favorite living author) and Prudence by Gail Carriger (in my top 5 of living authors).
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Tracy Ruscetti
Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
As a lecturer, I'm committed to teach 7 units per year. Each unit represents a lecture
course. Laboratory sections are 0.6 units so I end up teaching 1 lecture and 2 lab sections a
quarter. Most years, I am responsible for teaching upper division Medical Microbiology (35 students) and
Upper division Immunology (35 students) as well as a lower division laboratory intensive course called
Investigations in Cell and Molecular Biology (200 students). I have also taught lower division Cell
Biology, Upper division Molecular Biology and Upper Division General Microbiology.
Santa Clara University (SCU) is a private, Jesuit-run, Liberal Arts University of about 6000
undergraduates. The students are traditional (18-22 years old) with an eye towards professional post
graduate schools. The students are incredibly enthusiastic and engaged.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
Students are very resistant to changing the traditional lecture model. And they complain when
that model is disrupted. In every course I teach, I am shaking up that model by asking students to take
on more responsibility for their own learning. I think the only way to convince myself (and the students
and department and administration) that the students are making significant learning gains is to provide
solid data. But I am not (yet) equipped to design the kinds of classroom experiments that will give me
interpretable data.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I like to bike and run and swim and ski. I also have an unhealthy addiction to true crime shows
(e.g., I just finished watching The Jinx on HBO). The last few books I've read are, The Power of Two a
book about how creative teams operate. I started reading this book primarily because I work with an
extraordinary teaching partner with whom I share a deep passion for teaching and learning and without
whom I would not have been thinking about pedagogy. I've also read "Creativity Inc" about the guys who
started Pixar and what it takes to drive creativity forward. But not to sound too non-fiction snobby, I've
also read Gone Girl and Invisible (James Patterson).
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Jessica Santangelo
Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I currently teach mostly in our introductory biology courses for the majors. I see students in the
very first course (Animal Form and Function) and in one of the last courses (Evolution, Ecology, and
Behavior) in the intro series. Many are biology majors but I also have a lot of Health Sciences, PrePhysician Assistant, Nursing, and Psychology majors. I also occasionally teach a Human Biology course
for non-majors – for some the only bio course they will take in college.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I am most interested in taking home a network of colleagues I can reach out to and collaborate
with. I want to hone my skills and knowledge with respect to assessing the effectiveness of teaching
strategies. I would love to be challenged to raise the bar, not only in assessment of the impacts of my
own teaching, but in supporting colleagues at Hofstra in gathering data in their classes. Very practically, I
am teaching a section of our first intro course in the fall that includes an extra hour of time with the
students each week with which I can do whatever I want. I've decided to focus on metacognitive skills
development and want to use the course as the focus of my Research Residency project. I want to
ensure that I'm taking the best, most rigorous and appropriate approach to assessing the outcomes of this
"intervention".
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
Outside the classroom I have my own small business teaching childbirth education classes and
prenatal yoga. I was also a doula for a few births, but that is incredibly hard to juggle as babies don't
always comply with my full-time job schedule. I enjoy running, yoga, and playing with my almost 4 year
old daughter. I am currently reading two books: Mindset by Carol Dweck and Make it Stick by Brown,
Roediger, and McDaniel. Both are great (if very easy, somewhat internally redundant) and applicable to
the course I'm teaching in the fall.
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Ilse Silva-Krott
Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, VA
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I am a 100% online teacher or facilitator; and have been working in distance education for the last
15 years; with some hybrid courses and on-ground classes in the mix. I have taught for various
institutions, both private, public, for-profit and non-profit and with different online learning platforms, but
my courses are always life-science, undergraduate courses with and without labs.
My students come from all walks of life, but the majority fall into two groups - pre-nursing students
completing prerequisites for a nursing, medical or allied health program; and students completing the
science requirement for an associate or bachelor degree of some kind. I also teach science majors for a
for-profit university, upper division genetics, environmental biology and immunology. I have many military
students and military dependents, and older adults who switch careers in my classes, and a fair number
of at-risk students.
I have been involved in the design and evaluation of online courses (Biology, Nutrition. A&P,
Environmental Science), working by myself and in teams with instructional designers and other faculty.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I need to learn the nuts and bolts of educational research, as well as state of the art techniques to
critically asses teaching methods, and teaching outcomes. I want to examine online science education,
and especially online labs to see if they compare favorably to on-ground learning experiences of students.
I would like to evaluate and find out if online classes meet program goals, and if not, how we could
improve online education.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I love the outdoors and the fine arts, and am an avid hiker, bird watcher, field botanist, and
participant in any, non-motorized outdoor activity. I also like to read, and have to admit, I read various
fiction books for relaxation; but I am a member of a local book club, and we recently read Wally Lamb:
Couldn't keep it for myself. Nonfiction, stories of the women of York prison.
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Amanda Simons
Framingham State University, Framingham, MA
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I teach at Framingham State University, in Massachusetts. I teach Cell Biology, Genetics,
Molecular Biology, a seminar in Recombinant DNA Technology, and assorted other courses to fill in as
needed. Although I have taught non-majors in the past, I usually teach mid-to-upper level courses for
majors, with a class size of ~12-45. I'd estimate that about 10-15% of my students are nontraditional
students -- post-bacs, veterans, or older students. A little more than 50% of our students live on campus
and the rest are commuters.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
I've been very interested in pedagogy since college. I've been teaching at Framingham State for
7 years, but I still feel like I'm new at this! I've tried a lot of things to make my teaching more effective,
and I'd like to learn how to share them through publication. I've tried several different student-centered
practices in my courses, including a flipped-classroom model and problem-based learning. While I know
how to design a lab-based study, I don't really know what makes a good research question in the
classroom or what makes such a study publishable. For the institute, I'd like to look at whether having
multiple attempts at formative assessments ultimately helps students to master learning objectives, but I'd
like to be able to apply the same set of skills to other research questions as well.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
My husband and I have two small kids, so most of what I do outside of work involves them! The
snow has finally melted, and I'm excited to get back outside with them. I love to cook and to garden. I do
not love snow. The last book I read (and the second to last book, and the third to last book...) was
Dragons Love Tacos, which my kids love, but I'm normally a voracious reader. I read a lot of free, public
domain classics on my beloved Kindle, and the last real, hard copy book that I read was Pioneer Girl: The
Annotated Autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. (That is true, and convenient, because most of what I
read is fiction that I'd be embarrassed to talk about among new people.)
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Tatiana Tatum-Parker
Saint Xavier University, Chicago, IL
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I have been teaching at Saint Xavier University (SXU) for 10 years in Fall 2015. In a formal
setting I also taught for a year prior to getting my PhD at Jacksonville State University. At SXU I teach
introductory biology for majors, non-majors biology classes (Women in Science and Zombie Biology), and
genetics.
While our school prides itself on small class sizes, I still have 90+ students in my introductory
biology course for biology majors and 50+ students in upper level classes. I am working on changing how
the courses are taught so that they are more of increasingly student-centered, active classrooms.
One of the many challenges we are facing in these courses is the great diversity of students that are
taking this course. We have students that had AP courses their freshman year to students that did not
score higher than a 16 on the ACT. We also have a wide range of effort that the students are willing to
put in.
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
For my 300-level genetics class I plan to incorporate a problem-based inquiry approach to
increase genetics literacy among our students. This literacy is vital in the formation of citizens who are
well informed decision makers and partners in their physician-patient relationships and in their political
decision making. By doing this it will reinforce that we should not rely on teaching genetics, or any
material, solely in a linear, transmission model if we expect students to integrate and truly learn the
material. Students process messages about genetics complexly and critically, suggesting that the
pedagogy for a course that covers this topic should include a greater variety of texts about genetics in
research and attend more fully to audience processing in of the content analyses of these texts. By
having students read a primary source, evaluate the source, reconstruct the experiments and construct
their own papers they will be able to understand the terminology and concepts, understand the process,
and on their own discover and discuss the impacts of this on society.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
I love spending time with my husband and 2 year old daughter, trying to be outside as much as
we can in Chi-beria. I also love teaching belly dancing. My most recent book was World War Z.
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Claire Trottier
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
1) Describe your teaching responsibilities and the type of student you teach.
I am very early in my career and have not yet had very many opportunities to teach. I have taught
immunology to small groups of first year medical students, an upper-year seminar on inflammation, and a
large (~180 student) lecture amphitheater endocrinology class.
My primary responsibility in my department is to oversee the redesign of our undergraduate
curriculum to become more student-centered. I work with individual professors to assist them in the work
of changing courses.
Our students tend to be very motivated and competitive. Roughly half of our students come from
the province of Quebec, one quarter from the rest of Canada, and one quarter are international (including
the US).
2) Describe what you would like to take home as a result of attending the Research Institute.
My primary goal is to learn how to construct an appropriate research study in science education. I
would like to gain the capacity to contribute to this area of scholarship going forward in my career. I am
also very interested to meet others who share this interest and spark potential collaborations.
3) Tell us about your interests outside of the classroom and a book that you have read recently.
Most of my free time is spent with my two boys (ages 4 and 1), my husband and our dog. I have
a deep love of reading and started a book club that has been going strong for just over 10 years. My
favorite book from the last year was “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt. Our most recent selection was “HalfBlood Blues” by Esi Edugyan.
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