Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Congratulations Laurence!
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!
Fantastic Video made by SPIKE Alum Tuan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4TI2fqhYA
SEPAL NEWS!!
Congratulations SEPAL Graduate Students!
Melissa Richard (MS Ecology, Evolution & Conservation Biology) and John Rodriguez (MS Cell and Molecular Biology) were nominated for the 2016 Graduate Distinguished Achievement Awards!
Congratulations Shawntel!
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!
Congratulations Brenda!

Congratulations 2016 Graduate Distinguished Achievement Award Recipients!
| 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 |
SEPAL NEWS!
Congratulations Rebecca!
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.
Congratulations Bridget!
Undergraduate Microbiology major Bridget Hansen was accepted into the University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. in Microbiology program. Congratulations Bridget!
Congratulations John Rodriguez!
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.
Congratulations Nicholas Silva!
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.
Congratulations Stephen Kielar!
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.
Congratulations Tatiane Russo-Tait!
Tatiane Russo-Tait (MS Cell & Molecular Biology 2011) received a prestigious University of Texas, Austin Dean’s Scholars Fellowship.
Congratulations Lauren Fletcher!
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.
Congratulations Justine Ramon!
Undergraduate Cell & Molecular Biology major Justine Ramos was accepted into UCLA’s summer Program for Undergraduate Research: Life and Biomedical Science.
Congrats CHARLOTTE CHESNEY!
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.
SEPAL Publications and Exciting News!
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.
Congratulations Michelle McCully and Paul Hankamp SEPAL alumni!
SEPAL Master’s Student Melissa Richard is Awarded an Instructionally Related (IRA) Research Award
Congratulations Melissa!
Congratulations to SEPAL Alum Anthony Lopez for being hired to teach Biology!
SEPAL Research Publication with BS Biology Student (Reggi), MS Biology Graduate Student Alumnus (Schinske), Postdoctoral Fellow (Seidel), and two Faculty (Tanner and Burrus) authors Beyond the Biology: A Systematic Investigation of Noncontent Instructor Talk in an Introductory Biology Course
CBE Life Sci Educ December 1, 2015 14:ar43; doi:10.1187/cbe.15-03-0049
http://www.lifescied.org/content/14/4/ar43.abstract
We define a new construct termed Instructor Talk that may be a key mechanism for effectively implementing active learning and that may contribute to minimizing student resistance and stereotype threat, while building instructor immediacy. We used a mixed-methods approach and analyzed more than 600 instructor quotes. Presented here is a novel framework revealing the emergent categories and subcategories of the framework as well as examples of Instructor Talk.



