Archive for month: April, 2016
New Report: Building a Better Future STEM Faculty: How Teaching Development Programs Can Improve Undergraduate Education
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The Longitudinal Study of Future STEM Scholars was conducted by a team led by Dr. Mark Connolly at the University of Wisconsin. It examined the effects of teaching-focused professional development programs used by STEM doctoral students with academic aspirations (future STEM faculty). Over 2,000 doctoral students from three research universities (ASU, UW, UW), were surveyed 3 times over 5 years.
Tama Hasson and Michael Alfaro Among the Winners for the 2016 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Awards
The Academic Senate and its Committee on Diversity and Equal Opportunity (CODEO) have announced the recipients of the 2015-2016 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Awards. Each year, CODEO honors one undergraduate student, one graduate student, one staff and four faculty members for their contributions to furthering a diverse, impartial, and inclusive environment at UCLA.
Faculty Student Development DEI Award Recipients: Professor Michael Alfaro, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is this year’s Faculty Student Development DEI Award recipient. In the Spring of 2014, Professor Alfaro was one of the campus leaders who was tasked with developing a proposal to establish a diversity course requirement for undergraduate students in the College of Letters and Science. The proposal articulated the goals of the diversity requirement at UCLA as well as set criteria for courses satisfying the requirement, including numerous community-based courses. His leadership in this area contributed to the successful passage of the diversity requirement. Professor Alfaro also chaired the Diversity Implementation Committee that was charged with developing a process for syllabi evaluation, determining demand, and existing capacity for the new requirement and identifying additional resources required to mount the requirement for Fall 2015. He currently chairs both the Diversity Initiative Steering Committee and the Diversity Requirement ad hoc Committee.
Staff Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award Recipient: Tama Hasson, the Academic Director of the Program for Excellence in Education and Research in the Sciences (PEERS), is this year’s Staff DEI Award recipient. She has personally worked with and mentored more than 1000 students through a variety of programs at UCLA, all of which emphasize the success of students from underserved backgrounds. Dr. Hasson also played a leading role in the development of the curriculum that prepares these students to succeed in majors where they often are not successful. Since arriving at UCLA she has obtained at least 10 grants to support underserved and minority students to achieve educational and research excellence.
A Nobel Laureate’s Education Plea: Revolutionize Teaching
This short audio piece discusses the efforts of Professor of Physics at Stanford University, Carl Weiman to raise awareness of the importance of using a scientific and data-driven approach to understanding the impact of different styles of teaching, specifically traditional lecture compared to more active learning classroom pedagogies. The story also touches on some of the supports needed at the institutional level to support changes in the classroom.
Awareness Reduces Racial Bias by Devin G. Pope, Joseph Price, and Justin Wolfers
Abstract: Can raising awareness of racial bias subsequently reduce that bias? We address this question by exploiting the widespread media attention highlighting racial bias among professional basketball referees that occurred in May 2007 following the release of an academic study. Using new data, we confirm that racial bias persisted in the years after the study’s original sample, but prior to the media coverage. Subsequent to the media coverage though, the bias completely disappeared. We examine potential mechanisms that may have produced this result and find that the most likely explanation is that upon becoming aware of their biases, individual referees changed their decision-making process. These results suggest that raising awareness of even subtle forms of bias can bring about meaningful change.