We are currently soliciting interested UCLA and Santa Monica College STEM faculty to participate in Transforming College Teaching: Statewide Implementation of the Faculty Learning Program to Improve Stem Undergraduate Teaching and Learning.

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The University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and the Center for Teaching and Learning received an NSF IUSE grant to improve student achievement in STEM undergraduate courses through statewide transformation of college level teaching. STEM faculty from 2- and 4-year institutions participate in the Faculty Learning Program together to learn and improve their instructional practice, and build relationships and understanding of one another’s teaching and learning contexts. UCLA, along with local community colleges with high transfer rates have been expressly asked to participate in this statewide program.

For more information on this program and what is expected, please find more information summarized on one page here: Faculty Learning Program
We encourage anyone interested to contact Rachel Kennison at rkennison@ceils.ucla.edu.

Thank you!

Not Your Parents’ College Experience – What Today’s Students Need from Higher Ed

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The charts and figures in this interactive article show the increasing diversity of today’s students in higher education.

Higher education is a critical engine of social mobility and economic development for our country. For students, earning a postsecondary degree or credential is the surest pathway to economic opportunity and the chance to lead a healthy, productive life.

Today’s college students are more diverse than ever before. They are older students who may be juggling other responsibilities such as work and family. They are first-generation college-goers and students from low-income families who have high hopes but face new and unfamiliar challenges. And they are students of color who have gotten to and through college at lower rates than their white peers.

To help more Americans achieve their dreams and to build a stronger economy for all of us, we need to better understand who our students are and what they need to succeed. READ MORE.

CEILS Welcomes Rachel Kennison as Associate Director for Professional Development and Student Engagement

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Rachel Kennison

Rachel received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, MS in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University and her PhD in Biology from UCLA in 2008. Her graduate research focused on studying the structure and function of southern California estuaries, and the patterns of nutrient availability and macroalgal blooms. Her overriding goal was to further her passion for communicating science to a broad audience, teaching and mentoring and working with underrepresented students in science to improve the pipeline to higher education. After graduating she worked as Co-Director for the Centers for Ocean Science Education Excellence-West, a program connecting K-12 teachers with marine scientists and implementing cutting edge research into the K-12 classroom.

Rachel teaches the Career Development for Life Science Majors course (LS 110), exposing students to a variety of career opportunities in the sciences and featuring UCLA faculty and alumni speakers from various industries. Additionally, Rachel runs all of the programming for the CEILS CIRTL (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning) program. CIRTL provides professional development opportunities for future faculty (graduate students and postdoctoral scholars) interested in academic careers at the intersection of research and teaching.

Rachel can be contacted at rkennison@ceils.ucla.edu.

Zero Correlation Between Evaluations and Learning

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A number of studies suggest that student evaluations of teaching are unreliable due to various kinds of biases against instructors. Yet conventional wisdom remains that students learn best from highly rated instructors. What if the data backing up conventional wisdom were off? A new study suggests that past analyses linking student achievement to high student teaching evaluation ratings are flawed, a mere “artifact of small sample sized studies and publication bias.”

Read the whole article featured in Inside Higher Education here.
Find the study here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2016.08.007

U of Vermont’s College of Medicine announces it will get rid of lecture courses and completely reshape the faculty role — a first for a traditional medical school.

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Four years after two senior academics at Stanford University challenged medical schools to stop lecturing and start flipping their classrooms, major reforms at underway at a handful of colleges to change the way they teach medicine. Read the whole article here.

A New Approach to General Chemistry

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Researchers from Washington State University and CU-Boulder present a model for undergraduate chemistry curriculum development based on five important questions and offer a new general chemistry course — CLUE: Chemistry, Life, the Universe, and Everything — as an example of materials developed in this way.

SFES Influence Teaching Practices of Dept. Colleagues

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Departments are increasingly hiring Science Faculty with Education Specialties (SFES) to help improve undergraduate science education. According to a recent study, SFES report their strongest impact is influencing other faculty’s teaching practices.