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Invitation to Apply for HHMI Inclusive Excellence Biology Education Postdoctoral Fellowship
at San Francisco State University
SEPAL – The Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory – at San Francisco State University (SFSU) invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology Education and Research with a strong focus nn understanding and promoting inclusion, equity, and diversity in science. The position is renewable for up to 2 years and may begin as early as January 1, 2018.
Funded by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence Award, the Biology FEST: Faculty Empowering Students in Transformations effort will engage and partner with our talented, upper-division biology majors, most of whom are first- generation college-going students, students of color, and/or transfer students. Together in collaborations with faculty, these student leaders will participate in continued transformation of the undergraduate biology experience, as peer-learning-assistants and role models in biology classrooms and as co-developers of curricular materials that highlight the importance of diversity in science.
This SEPAL Postdoctoral Fellowship position will be under the supervision of Dr. Kimberly Tanner. The Postdoctoral Fellow will collaborate in designing, collecting, and analyzing assessments to investigate the impact of the effort on student experiences in biology, including their sense of belonging and development of science identity, and on faculty teaching practices. In addition to a research role, the SEPAL Postdoctoral Fellow will also participate in day-to-day program implementation, including recruitment of participants, co-design and co-teaching of a service-learning course for participating students, planning and coordination of faculty professional development activities, and grant management and reporting.
Required and Preferred Qualifications
Required qualifications are a Ph.D. in biology or life science education and a strong interest in developing inclusive excellence in biology education scholarship and research. Experience working with diverse populations of students and faculty is essential, as is a strong interest in promoting equity and inclusion in the sciences. The abilities to prioritize tasks, to engage in long- and short-term planning, and to handle a variety of demands simultaneously are critical. Candidates must be willing and able to work a flexible schedule, including occasional travel, weekends, and extended hours during periods of intense activity. The following attributes, experiences, and knowledge are preferred: creativity and curiosity, mentorship skills, curriculum development experience, in-depth knowledge of national science education reform efforts, formal teaching experience, experience with databases, experience in developing assessments, and qualitative and quantitative assessment analysis skills. We seek a self-motivated, creative individual who has excellent interpersonal, writing, and public speaking skills who can work both
SEPAL: The Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory Department of Biology, San Francisco State University Fall 2017
independently and as part of a team effort and who will bring new perspectives to our efforts to promote inclusion in science.
San Francisco State University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action
Employer with a strong commitment to diversity. All qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other legally protected category. We strongly encourage the application of individuals from historically underrepresented groups.
Salary and Appointment
This SEPAL Postdoctoral Fellowship position is a full-time, salaried, and benefited position at San Francisco State University. The position is annually renewable, dependent on performance and continued grant funding, which is anticipated. Salary is competitive and commensurate with professional experience and qualifications of the candidates. San Francisco State University offers excellent benefits packages.
Application Procedure
To apply for the SEPAL Postdoctoral Fellowship positions, please submit the following to SEPAL Program Administrator, Trisha DeVera, via email (deverat@sfsu.edu):
- 1) a letter of interest in the position, including your career goals (no more than 2 pages),
- 2) a current curriculum vitae,
- 3) a statement of general research interests (no more than 2 pages and need not relatespecifically to this effort),
- 4) a statement of general teaching philosophy (no more than 2 pages and including adescription of characteristics of inclusive classroom environments), and
- 5) the names of three professional references, including current position, relationshipto the applicant, and phone and email contact information.
Application Review Timeline
Review of applications will begin on Friday, October 20, 2017 and will continue until the position is filled.
Questions?
Questions about the position should be directed to SEPAL Director, Dr. Kimberly D. Tanner, Professor, Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, (kdtanner@sfsu.edu). More information about SEPAL can be found at: http://www.sfsusepal.org/.
SEPAL: The Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory Department of Biology, San Francisco State University Fall 2017
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Outreach that Charles Lee, a SEPAL alumni spear-headed along with other SEPAL SPIKE alumni.
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By Jamie Oppenheim Thursday, June 15, 2017
SF State is one of 24 schools participating in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence initiative focused on increasing diversity in the sciences.
Five-year grant aims to improve retention rates in biology among underrepresented minorities
The lack of representation of minority students in the sciences nationwide has been well documented. One-third of all college freshmen who plan to study science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are underrepresented minorities, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but only one-sixth of those students actually graduate with degrees in STEM. San Francisco State University’s Department of Biology hopes to chip away at this long-standing inequity with a five-year, $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the largest private funder of science education.
Out of 500 applicants, SF State was one of 24 other universities chosen to participate in the HHMI Inclusive Excellence initiative, which is designed to engage all students to be successful in science, especially underrepresented minorities and non-traditional students.
SF State data shows that 35 percent of freshman biology majors actually graduate with a degree in biology in six years or less. That percentage is significantly lower for African American, Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander and Filipino students. While most universities have high failure rates among students in introductory chemistry and biology courses, SF State has an 80 percent success rate. Given these two points, SF State faculty are targeting biology classes at the junior and senior level as the place where minority students leave the major, according to the HHMI proposal.
SF State Professor of Biology Kimberly Tanner is overseeing the HHMI grant, in strong collaboration with the majority of SF State’s almost 60 biology instructors. Tanner is also the director of the University’s Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory (SEPAL), and this new award builds on prior HHMI funding support for faculty efforts in innovative teaching. Tanner and her biology colleagues Blake Riggs, Laura Burrus and Carmen Domingo have developed a multi-pronged approach to retain underrepresented students in the major by focusing on teaching and coursework.
The main features of the grant are faculty partnerships with underrepresented advanced biology majors to serve as peer mentors in classrooms and to develop culturally relevant curriculum. Students working with faculty will receive credit for their efforts through a four-unit service-learning biology course. Post-doctoral research scholars will work with faculty-student teams and collect data to gauge the effectiveness of the programs.
Biology concepts can seem abstract, Tanner said, but when you learn something in the context of your community, evidence shows the information is more meaningful. For example, in one case study, students examine the death of Cynthia Lucero, a Latina scholar who died running the Boston Marathon. “Why did she die? It’s actually related to water balance in your body,” Tanner said. “Students can learn about osmosis over and over again and they don’t seem to understand it. But when they do the case study, it seems to click because they think, ‘That could be somebody in my family.’”
That’s only one example of putting biology into a culturally relevant context, Tanner added, and the partnership between faculty and students is designed to expand those examples and tease out what’s most meaningful to students. “If we love science and we want to understand complex problems, we have to engage people who think about the world in different ways,” she said.
Another component that could prove to be a real game changer is peer mentoring. Blake Riggs is a huge supporter of near peer-mentoring and said this could transform the culture within science. “Students go to their friends first for help,” Riggs said. “If we can harness that and they can now go to their peer mentor, who is more approachable than a professor, we can keep them on the right track.”
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Congratulations to our own SEPAL grad student, Analisa Brown, (front row), Jackson Reeder (back row left, SCI 750 Alumni), and Lan Ma (front left next to Analisa, SCI 750 alumni) who went to the 2017 CSU-wide Research Competition!
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Congratulation to Analisa Brown for her nomination as 2017 Graduate Distinguished Achievement Awards in Physiology and Behavior.
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Check out Shannon Seidel’s work on active learning in the new Division of Natural Sciences newsletter: Synapse. Want more? Click here!
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Opportunities
As Owens’ manuscript suggests, this brings opportunity for institution-wide, automated analysis of teaching practices without having to have person-time in the classroom or watching (and coding) course videos. This is a game-changer. Read the manuscript for more potential benefits.
The reason I was so excited about DART this morning is because I pride myself on incorporating active learning in my courses at Fresno State. Plus (the BIG plus), I have years of lecture capture recordings that I could be analyzing RIGHT NOW! So, before getting ready for work this morning, I threw a few of my .mp4 file exports from ExplainEverything at DART.
Thus, a key benefit is those of us with stockpiles of audio can get straight to analysis. Today.
Further, with audio recording devices being dead cheap (ranging from dedicated digital audio recorders to cell phones, laptops, tablets…), everybody can (and should!) start analyzing their teaching style using this technique. Today. Except…
If you would like to read more, click here
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Congratulations to SFSU and SEPAL SPIKE alumna, Genesis Vasconez, in her acceptance to the UCSF Masters Entry Program in
Nursing!!
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Inside Higher Education writes its insight on the new DART App, used to measure the extent to which professors use active learning in their classrooms.
For more info, click here
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Detecting active learning in college classrooms
Researchers designed an algorithm that uses sound to identify teaching practices in college classrooms. Previous studies show that classes with active learning, when students learn through talking and problem solving, result in higher learning gains and student retention than lecture-only classes. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested to shift science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) college courses from the common lecture-based teaching style to more active learning. Kimberly Tanner and colleagues designed Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART), a machine-learning algorithm that rapidly analyzes classroom audio recordings, to quantify the frequency of different teaching practices in a classroom. For 1,486 recordings from 67 college courses across 21 community colleges and universities, DART distinguished the amount of classroom time spent with no voices or thinking/writing time, one voice or lecture/question-and-answer time, and multiple voices or discussion time. DART identified teaching styles with an approximately 90% accuracy rate and worked well in both small and large classes. The amount of time spent on active learning activities—both no voices and multiple voices activities—was higher for courses for STEM majors than courses for non-STEM majors, and 88% of courses analyzed here used active learning in at least half of class sessions. Given its efficiency, DART makes regular, systematic analyses of the use of active learning in classrooms possible for individual instructors, departments, institutions, and researchers, according to the authors.
For more information, click here
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