Biology Education

The lab is engaged in teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We base our teaching on best practices from literature on teaching. As part of this effort, we also conduct discipline-based education research (DBER).

Quantitative biology education

In collaboration with the Aikens Lab, we are investigating how undergraduate biology students can be successful in their quantitative coursework. We have ongoing projects to understand how students learn R across the curriculum and how students connect what they learn in introductory mathematics courses with their biology coursework.

Summer bridge programs

One common approach to help students be successful in their first-year introductory courses are summer bridge programs. At UC Davis, I taught the Biology Undergraduate Scholars Program (BUSP). We found that BUSP participants improved their biology knowledge through the summer bridge program. However, math confidence, SAT scores, Grit measures, and performance in the bridge program were not predictive of success in their biology course. We also found that BUSP students were more likely to remain in Life Science major and graduate.

Poster of our findings available at: https://peerj.com/preprints/27816/