Congratulations to our SEPAL Graduate, Melissa Richard, for presenting her thesis defense on
Intuitive Reasoning and Evolution Knowledge in Explanations of Antibiotic Resistance.
Left to Right: Trisha de Vera, Chris Moffat, John Coley, Kimberly Tanner, Sarah Bissonnette,
Melissa Richard, Analisa Brown,Kristin De Nesnera, Derik Gonzalez, Tiffy Nguyen, and John Rodriguez
Congratulations to our SEPAL Graduate, Tiffy Nguyen, for presenting her thesis defense on:
Investing Instructor Talk in Community College Biology Classrooms
Pictured here: Tiffy Nguyen
SEPAL graduate student, Analisa Brown, was awarded a University Scholarship and a 100 Black Men Scholarship. Congratulations Analisa!
SFSU Biology and SEPAL alumnus, Brianna McCoy, is now a Lead Zoo Ambassador Coordinator at the Oregon Zoo. She will be managing volunteers for a program called Zoo Quest aimed at showing how food waste harms wildlife and what every day actions one can take to limit one’s own food waste.
Brianna completed her MS with a concentration in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology (EECB).
Alycia Maria Escobedo, Kristen Liang, and Katie Lam presented their research poster titled “Examining Differences in Non-Content Instructor Talk Across Varying Instructor Demographics” at the 2016 COSE Student Project Showcase at SFSU. They won 2nd place in the category for Undergraduate Life Sciences. Congratulations to you all!
Laurence Henson, who graduated from SFSU with a Bachelor’s in Physiology and is a SEPAL SPIKE alumnus, has been accepted to UCSF Medical School!! Congratulations!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4TI2fqhYA
Melissa Richard (MS Ecology, Evolution & Conservation Biology) and John Rodriguez (MS Cell and Molecular Biology) were nominated for the 2016 Graduate Distinguished Achievement Awards!
Former SEPAL SPIKE alumna Shawntel Okonkwo (BS Physiology 2014) is a Ph.D. candidate in molecular biology at UCLA and recently became a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Congrats Shawntel!
| Graduate Honorees | Department |
| Mateo, Leslie Johanna | Biology (Cell & Mol Biol)-MS |
| Kowalski, Beatriz Angela | Biology (Microbiology)-MS |
| Meyers, Morgan Teal | Biology (Marine Biology)-MS |
| Quintanilla, Luis | Biology (Cell & Mol Biol)-MS |
| Richard, Melissa | Biology ( Ecology, Evo. & Con. ) MS |
| Rodriguez, John | Biology (Cell & Mol Biol)-MS |
| Snethlage, Cedric Elijah | Biomedical Sci (Stm Cell S)-MS |
| Tabuena, Dennis R | Biology (Physiology/Behavr)-MS |
Bio 230 alum, graduating SFSU Biology major, and Domingo Lab member Rebecca Blandino has been accepted and will attend UC Davis next fall to pursue her PhD in the BMCDB- Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Program.
Undergraduate Microbiology major Bridget Hansen was accepted into the University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. in Microbiology program. Congratulations Bridget!
SEPAL’s MS Physiology graduate student, John Rodriguez has been selected to represent SFSU at the state-level competition for the area of “Education.”
This is an amazing accomplishment, he will compete at the CSU level on April 29-30, 2016, at CSU Bakersfield.
Nicholas Silva (MS Physiology and Behavioral Biology 2012) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan. He will teach a summer neuroscience course at the Center for Talented Youth Program at Dickinson College.
SEPAL MS in Marine Biology alumnus Stephen Kielar was just hired for
Assistant Scientist
Sea Education Association (SEA)
Summer Semester: Historic Seaports of Western Europe
Route: Cork, Ireland – Brest, France – Lisbon, Portugal – Cadiz, Spain
Course Description:
Explore impacts of European maritime ventures on the societies they contacted in the Atlantic or Pacific, with focus on the resulting social, political, economic, and cultural changes. Investigate responses documented in the post-Colonial literature of indigenous people.
Tatiane Russo-Tait (MS Cell & Molecular Biology 2011) received a prestigious University of Texas, Austin Dean’s Scholars Fellowship.
SFSU alumni Lauren Fletcher major was Biology with a physiology emphasis, graduated May 2015 has been accepted to the DOE SULI Internship Program! For the next six months, she will be conducting exciting research as an intern at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA.
Undergraduate Cell & Molecular Biology major Justine Ramos was accepted into UCLA’s summer Program for Undergraduate Research: Life and Biomedical Science.
CHARLOTTE CHESNEY (BS Zoology 2015) is a Ventana Wildlife Society Condor Intern
She held a position in Yellowstone which ran for the migration season (September-October). And is now a Condor Intern with the Ventana Wildlife Society in San Simeon where she observes captive condors, tracks free-flying condors, and feeds both captive and free-flying condors. She will also be assisting in handling, attaching transmitters, and releasing the captive birds later in the spring/summer.
Professors of Biology Laura Burrus and Kimberly Tanner, along with members of the research group SEPAL (Science Education Partnership and Assessment Lab), co-authored the research publication “Beyond the Biology: A Systematic Investigation of Noncontent Instructor Talk in an Introductory Biology Course,” which was published Dec. 1 by CBE: Life Sciences Education. The publication defined a new construct termed “Instructor Talk,” which may be a key mechanism for effectively implementing active learning and may contribute to minimizing student resistance and stereotype threat while building instructor immediacy. Tanner and her SEPAL colleagues have authored four of the top 10 most-read articles in CBE: Life Sciences Education during 2015, laying claim to the top three articles and a total of more than 51,000 downloads.
Also, Tanner was selected as a PULSE Fellow. PULSE (Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education) is a national group of fellows and community members who work to foster life science department transformation by developing strategies to incorporate the recommendations of the 2011 national report, “Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action.” Information about the work accomplished by the PULSE fellows and community can be found at www.pulsecommunity.org.
She was also invited to be on the faculty of the Sixth Latin American School for Education, Cognitive and Neural Sciences in Buenos Aires in March 2016. The gathering seeks to foster a new generation of rigorous researchers with broad knowledge in neuroscience and the ability to operate at the interface between education and science.
Tanner was invited to give the keynote presentation at the 2016 Teaching Professor Conference in Washington, D. C., in June 2016, as well.
©2025 SEPAL is made possible through funds from the National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Award (NCRRSEPAR25RR024307-01), National Science Foundation GK-12 Grant (DGE0337949), PFSMETE Start-Up Grant (DGE-0136879), SFSU Center for Math and Science Education, SFSU Institute for Civic and Community Engagement and through in-kind support from the SFSU Department of Biology and College of Science and Engineering.
