News
2021 dB-SERC Course Transformation Awards
The reciepients of the 3 Course Transfomation Awards and 1 mentor mentee award for 2021 were featured in the University Times this week. Read the full article online here.
Equity in Physics and Biology
This week, we saw two exciting new articles about equity in science.
2019-2020 dB-SERC Leadership Awards
We are excited to share that 14 dB-SERC community members have been recognized for their leadership in our community. For more details, see the article at the University Times.
Fall 2020 SEISMIC Events
SEISMIC, a collaboration of 10 universities working together to improve equity in introductory STEM courses, has launched their Fall 2020 Speakers Bureau. A number of the talks will be of interest to the dB-SERC community. See the talk schedule on the SEISMIC website.
2020 dB-SERC Course Transformation Awards
The University Times this week has an article about the 2020 recipients of dB-SERC Course Transformation and Mentor/Mentee Awards. We are very proud of the 9 recipients of the Course Transformation Award and the 2 recipients of the Mentor/Mentee Award for 2020. Read the full article online here.
Belonging Intervention Fosters Success
Snapshot, the newsletter of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, featured dB-SERC community members Dr. Ericka McGreevy, Dr. Kevin Binning, and Dr. Chandralekha Singh in a recent article. The feature describes their work to develop and implement an ecological belonging intervention in introductory biology and physics classes. The intervention has been shown to increase academic performance, attendance, and persistence, especially for students from historically underrepresented groups in those disciplines.
Inclusion and the 'Leaky Pipeline' at Pitt
Dr. Chandralekha Singh, founder of dB-SERC, along with Dr. Sarah Hainer and Dr. Alison Slinsky Legg from the biology department and Dr. Alaine Allen from engineering were featured in a recent PittWire article about bias in STEM. The article discusses intersectionality, inclusive practices, and the importance of recognition for students from underrepresented groups.
2019 dB-SERC Award Recipients
The 11 recipients of the 2019 dB-SERC Course Transformation Awards have been recognized in an article in the University Times, as have two of the recipients of the 2019 dB-SERC Mentor/Mentee Awards. We also congratulate Jordan Swisher, Dr. Ericka Huston, and Dr. Peter Bell, our most-recent recipeints of the Mentor/Mentee Award.
Congratulations Leadership Award Recipients!
The recipients of the 2018-2019 dB-SERC Leadership Award have been announced.
Growth Mindset for New Faculty
At the 2019 orientation for new faculty, Provost Ann Cudd stressed the importance of adopting the growth mindset theory of intelligence when working with students. "We are here to create talent and develop a growth mindset," she said. This will sound familiar to dB-SERC community members, who have seen how important instructor mindset is for promoting the learning of all our students. For more, read the article in the University Times online.
CONGRATULATIONS
CONGRATULATIONS to the recipients of dB-SERC course transformation awards for the 2018-2019 academic year. Ten faculty members and one postdoctoral student received awards to transform courses in biological sciences, physics, psychology, statistics, chemistry, and mathematics.
Read about the awardsAccolades
Dr. Ben Rottman, psychology and LRDC research scientist, was awarded an NSF CAREER award. Dr. Rottman is a member of the dB-SERC faculty learning community and was awarded a dB-SERC course transformation award focused on helping students learn about causality in his research methods course.Publications
Drs. Ericka Huston, George Bandik, Jackie Powell, and others recently published a paper in the Journal of Chemical Education focused on the development of their chemistry safety course, for which they received a dB-SERC course transformation award. You can read the article here. Congratulations to the authors!Pittsburgh Post Gazette News
Dr. Russell Clark, physics and astronomy department and dB-SERC course transformation award winner, is featured in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for his project with physics majors involving the Eclipse 2017.