Michael Edward Moore

Mentoring is crucial to faculty development; however, not all instructors have access to supportive structures. The Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) network facilitated one-on-one faculty mentoring within a structured learning community to encourage active learning. Prior work ( n = 7, only Fellows) created three personas that characterized the range of different Fellows and their motivations for joining the PALM network. Following recruitment from the entire PALM network ( n = 120), both Fellows and Mentors were interviewed ( n = 38) about their interest in joining PALM and their experience in this professional development network. After coding each transcript, we identified three personas: Neil the Novice (limited active learning exposure, lacks role models), Bryn the Budding Expert (experienced implementing active learning, seeking more nuanced approaches, and networking), and Elena the Expert (experienced implementing active learning, integrated into networks, and wants to mentor). Interestingly, features of the previously identified persona, Issa the Isolated (a sense of isolation and a need for external support and validation), were observed in conjunction with two of the three personas—Neil the Novice and Bryn the Budding Expert—but did not form a separate persona. Some individuals reported progression to new personas as a result of participating in PALM. Our findings highlight the importance of supportive networks in helping faculty become more confident instructors. This qualitative analysis of persona development can be used to inform mentoring and other professional development initiatives.

The 2011 report Vision and Change: A Call to Action ( V&C ) resulted from a national effort to rethink biology curriculum. V&C outlines core concepts and core competencies for biology undergraduates and promotes evidence-based pedagogy, undergraduate research, and inclusive practices. However, it is unclear how much biology educators know about V&C and what motivates educators’ development of their teaching philosophy and practices. We leveraged the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) Network, a group that introduced evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) to instructors through mentoring, journal clubs, and a community of practice, to investigate how much V&C has influenced educator knowledge and motivation. Through focus groups, 16 mentors and 22 fellows were asked about their motivations to join PALM, familiarity with V&C , how they learned about V&C , and how PALM and/or V&C shaped the development of their teaching philosophies and strategies. We found that the teaching philosophies and practices of these educators align strongly with V&C principles. V&C provided expectancy (established value), while PALM contributed to greater instructor self-efficacy in EBIPs, overall resulting in reformed teaching philosophies and practices. This model highlights the importance of mentorship and community to successfully drive biology education reform.

The 2011 Vision & Change report outlined several recommendations for transforming undergraduate biology education, sparking multiple pedagogical reform efforts. Among these was the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) network, an NSF-funded program that provided mentorship and training to instructors on implementing active learning in the classroom. Here, we provide a perspective on how members of the biology education community in PALM view the recommendations of Vision & Change , drawing upon our experiences both as members of PALM and as leaders of an associated project funded by another NSF grant that hosted PALM alumni at various conferences. These efforts have allowed us to gain insight into how our alumni think of Vision & Change , including how they interpret its recommendations, the challenges and opportunities that they view for implementing these recommendations, and the areas they see as critical to be addressed in future national reports for supporting undergraduate biology education. We synthesize these voices here, providing perspectives from a diverse group of biology instructors on what they think about Vision & Change , and provide recommendations for the biology education community based upon these PALM community voices.

Students who experience research as undergraduates tend to remain in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Since course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are often expensive to implement, we developed a relatively inexpensive first-semester research course for majors entitled “Freshman Research in Biochemistry,” in which approximately 100 students participated in an ongoing research project each year. During this course, students conducted laboratory work related to multiple research veins, and graduate teaching assistants (TAs) and the instructor ensured that sufficient data from the laboratory were made available to the students to analyze. During three unique course iterations, students worked on faculty research projects that included connecting contigs of the draft genome of a native Oklahoma bacterial Arhodomonas isolate capable of degrading petroleum hydrocarbons, cloning antibiotic resistance genes from the genus Elizabethkingia, and analyzing RNAseq data from Elizabethkingia anopheles challenged with cell wall-active antibiotics to determine gene function, gene differential expression, and relative gene genome location. During the course, students scored results, analyzed data, maintained laboratory notebooks, and presented posters in a symposium to faculty and graduate TAs. To determine positive impacts of the course on students, they completed the Laboratory Course Assessment Survey in two course sections. Survey data indicated/students agreed that the course included elements of Iteration, Collaboration, and Discovery and Relevance. Students also reported that they gained scientific skills but were ambivalent about whether instructor feedback was harsh. Examination of Student Survey of Instruction responses showed students thought positively about the course, but some considered it too difficult. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major cohort tracking revealed no effect of Freshman Research in Biochemistry on student persistence in the major or institution. Nonetheless, we consider the course a cost-conscious model for biochemistry and molecular biology departments for introducing research to first-year students.

The demonstrated gap between skills needed and skills learned within a college education places both undergraduates seeking gainful employment and the employers seeking highly skilled workers at a disadvantage. Recent and up-and-coming college graduates should possess 21st century skills (i.e., communication, collaboration, problem solving), skills that employers deem necessary for the workplace. Research shows that the development of this skillset can help narrow the gap in producing highly skilled graduates for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce.

In the United States, persistence for women and ethnic minorities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers is strongly impacted by affective factors such as science identity, agency, and sense of belonging. Policies aimed at increasing the diversity of the national STEM student population and workforce have recently focused on fostering inclusive learning environments that can positively impact the experiences of underrepresented minorities (URMs) in STEM, thus increasing their retention. While research on inclusion in STEM in higher education is relatively new, inclusion research has a rich history in several other disciplines. These fields have developed theoretical frameworks and validated instruments to conceptualize and assess inclusion. Self-determination theory (SDT) is a well-established theoretical framework in educational psychology that states that ones’ internal motivation is strongly correlated with the satisfaction of three specific psychological needs: autonomy, competency, and relatedness. In this paper, we introduce SDT and discuss how it relates to inclusion and to ongoing efforts to increase retention of STEM URM students in higher education environments. We argue that grounding inclusion initiatives in the SDT framework increases our understanding of the mechanisms mediating their impact, thus facilitating their reproducibility and generalizability. Finally, we describe how this theoretical framework has been adapted by the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology to define and assess inclusion in the workplace as an example of how STEM education researchers can use this framework to promote and assess inclusion in their fields.

In contrast to efforts focusing on improving inclusion in STEM classrooms from kindergarten through undergraduate (K–16), efforts to improve inclusion in scientific meetings and conferences, important hubs of STEM culture, are more recent. Markers of inclusion that are sometimes overlooked at these events can include the composition of panels, how workshops are run, the affordability of conferences, and various other mechanisms that maintain pre-existing hierarchies and norms that limit the participation of early-career researchers and individuals of minoritized cultural, linguistic, and economic backgrounds. The Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) network coordinates efforts of researchers from many fields interested in diversity and inclusion in biology education. Given the concerns regarding inclusion at professional meetings, iEMBER has developed and implemented several practices in planning and executing our meetings to make them more inclusive. In this report, we share our experiences developing inclusive meetings on biology education research and discuss the outcomes of such efforts. Specifically, we present our approach to planning and executing the iEMBER 2019 conference and the National Association of Biology Teachers iEMBER 2019 workshop. This report adds to the growing body of resources on inclusive meetings, provides readers with an account of how such an attempt at implementation might unfold, and complements existing theories and work relating to the importance and functioning of such meetings in terms of representation in STEM.

The Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) network is a newly forming national community of practice that engages diversity, equity, and inclusion stakeholders in interdisciplinary collaborative projects. iEMBER was initiated with incubator funding from the National Science Foundation program for Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education. In June 2017, biology education researchers, social scientists, biologists, and program and policy administrators, all with interests in diversity, equity, and inclusion, met to lay the foundation for the iEMBER network. iEMBER provides a distinct forum to coordinate efforts through networking, professional development, and the initiation of collaborative research. iEMBER advances science, technology, engineering, and mathematics reform focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion through the initiation of research teams at the iEMBER biennial conference and outreach efforts at discipline-specific meetings and conferences. The focus of iEMBER is on understanding how to create inclusive, supportive, and engaging environments to foster the success of all biology students and trainees. This report focuses on the structure of the iEMBER network, two takeaways that emerged from the 2017 conference (interdisciplinary networking/collaboration and intradisciplinary broadening participation strategies), and ways for prospective members to engage in ongoing dialogue and future events. Learn more at http://iember.org .