Three Scholarship Opportunities to the 2017 Case Study Teaching Fall Conference

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This year the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science is pleased to offer three (3) scholarships to our 2017 Case Study Teaching Fall Conference held on September 15-16, 2017 in Buffalo, NY. Each scholarship includes: complimentary registration, meals served at the conference that are included in the conference registration, lunch both days and dinner on Friday), and up to a $300 stipend towards travel/room-and-board expenses, which will be reimbursed after the conference, with proof of expenses. For more information on the conference including registration, lodging and the conference schedule, please visit the conference website at: http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/training/conference/

Scholarship Opportunities: (one scholarship in each category) 1. Post-Doctoral Fellow/Graduate Student, 2. K-12 Teacher, 3. College Faculty Member at a school tied to the following documented official designations (these are federally-designated): Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), Historically Black College/University (HBCU), Tribal College/University (TCU), or Minority Postsecondary Institution (MPI). Please provide documentation that your school meets these criteria by way of a website link or other document.

To apply for a scholarship, please submit an email application to Carolyn Wright cwright2@buffalo.edu by 5/1/17.

Submission Guidelines: Your application must be submitted according to the following requirements: One (1) PDF, Times New Roman, 11 pt. font, 3 page maximum, with the following pdf file name: category_lastname (ex: postdoc_wright). Only one application/category per person even if you might fall under several categories. The pdf document should contain the following information in the order/line breaks listed below:

1. Last Name, First Name
2. Category (select only one category)
3. Academic Title, Department
4. Institution name
5. Institution address
6. Email address, Phone number
7. What are your goals for teaching?
8. Why do you want to attend our conference?
9. How would you apply what you learn at our conference?
10. How would you share with colleagues what you learn at our conference?
11. If you are applying as a Graduate Student award, please give your expected degree and graduation year.
12. A copy of your CV (curriculum vitae) which is a professional resume. Your CV must be part of the 3 page limit pdf submission. For our purposes, we would like to know your: relevant science/teaching work experience (including related work at a school or private industry, e.g., work experience at a lab), your education, any science/teaching professional organizations you belong to, any publications, courses taught, awards/honors, etc.

UCLA Undergrads and Faculty Attends Conference on STEM Education Research

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(Left to Right: Shanna Shaked, Such Amin, David Ho, Ronnel Azizollahi, Nguyen Nguyen, Nikhil Shah; Photo credit: Deb Pires)


On March 24, 2017, a group of UCLA faculty and undergraduates enjoyed taking part in SoCal PKAL 2017 – the regional meeting of the Association of American Colleges & Universities Project Kaleidoscope, held at the University of California, San Diego. Some of UCLA’s recent efforts in physics education research were presented in poster form by the undergraduate learning assistants and researchers pictured here.

Can we anticipate graduate student success if we can’t assess it?

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How we choose the next generation of scientists is at the root of a sustainable scientific enterprise. The true value of a PhD may therefore be in training leaders who can advance science, while also gaining the necessary skills to succeed both during and after graduate school. A successful graduate of a PhD program must be able to contribute expertise or knowledge to advance a particular field. To attain this goal, they must possess skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, perseverance, conviction, and adaptability. These traits cannot be assessed by certain quantitative measures which graduate schools rely on during the initial stages of the admissions process. This practice eliminates otherwise promising candidates from the pool of applicants considered competitive for graduate school.

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Lenient Grades, Unreliable Grades

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Professors love to hate grade inflation, saying course marks aren’t as meaningful as they used to be. A new paper makes the case that easy grading is actually a symptom of poor assessment practices rather than a cause and that, either way, reducing leniency in grading may lead to more accurate assessment.

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Female-only “Nerd” Dorm Helps Keeps Women in Engineering

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Coming from a small school district in Ohio where few girls took part in intensive mathematics or science classes, Callie Zawaski was an outlier. “I may have been the only person in my grade who was excited by STEM classes,” she says.

After being accepted into Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, the school’s dean encouraged her to join a female-­only dorm designed to keep women in engineering majors until graduation. Ms. Zawaski blanched at first.

“I really didn’t want to join up,” she says. “I was worried about being surrounded by nerds all the time.”

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How to Handle Three Common Demands from Students in Large Courses

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I recently had a conversation with a faculty member about the midterm feedback she had received from the students in her course. Her response to their suggestions echoed one I often hear in my work in faculty development: “Really, I can’t believe all the things students want me to do for them nowadays—they expect to be spoon-fed. This isn’t grade school!” As faculty we can indeed feel beset by student demands today. No wonder—the students attending our colleges and universities come from more diverse backgrounds than ever before, and they may be more focused on attaining credentials for a job than expanding their minds.

But not all of our students’ demands are unwarranted. Sometimes our students are expressing the needs and frustrations of novice learners in our fields. They know that something isn’t working for them, but they may not know the real basis for their problems nor the best way to fix them. In these cases, we need to translate their comments into the language of learning (Hodges and Stanton 2007). Only then can we decide whether—and how—to change our teaching to accommodate an apparent student need.

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AAU Mini-Grant Recipients – Drs. Gina Poe, Megan McEvoy, and Erin Sanders: UCLA to Enhance Undergraduate STEM Education

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Pictured above are Director of the mini-grant Dr. Gina Poe (middle), and Co-Directors Drs. Megan McEvoy (right) and Erin Sanders (left).

UCLA is among 12 universities nationally to be awarded a grant from the Association of American Universities to fund workshops on campus over the next year to assess all programs that support and retain undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Read more in the UCLA Newsroom.

Undergraduate Research Experiences for STEM Students: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities (2017)

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Undergraduate research has a rich history, and many practicing researchers point to undergraduate research experiences (UREs) as crucial to their own career success. There are many ongoing efforts to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education that focus on increasing the active engagement of students and decreasing traditional lecture-based teaching, and UREs have been proposed as a solution to these efforts and may be a key strategy for broadening participation in STEM. In light of the proposals questions have been asked about what is known about student participation in UREs, best practices in UREs design, and evidence of beneficial outcomes from UREs.

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