Not many people can say that they found a job they loved through failure! While I fell in love with the neurosciences at the University of Michigan, I never considered anything but medical school. It wasn't until I met failure after academic failure at Wayne State University School of Medicine that I re-evaluated how I learned and what I loved what about learning with help from supportive counsellors and faculty. Leaving medical school, I gained some experience teaching at a small private school and working as a tutor before I started a graduate program in Science Education at the University of Georgia. Here, I got to work with amazing educators and researchers on incredible projects and watched how their teaching changed how their students thought about science. I worked on different projects studying students' learning outcomes at the elementary and undergraduate levels and change initiatives related to the evaluation of undergraduate STEM teaching at the departmental level. My own experiences translated into my dissertation research, examining whether and how students' failures could lead to learning in science. This work led me to FLAMEnet, a community of researchers and educators who were also thinking about how to utilize student challenges into learning opportunities. I felt I was incredibly lucky to be a member of that network... and a few years later, I'm even more excited to be the network's postdoc! As a postdoc with FLAMEnet, I organize regular community meetings, the annual conference, and professional development opportunities for our members. So, my experiences with failure followed by my study of failure brought me full circle to a job I love! Outside of work, you'll find me on a trail with my Great Pyrenees puppy (Alfie!), attempting to learn languages and the guitar, and traveling to meet friends and family around the world. I love to chat about what I do and the experiences that led me here, so please do reach out to me if you want to know more!

FLAMEnet Postdoctoral Fellow (website)

E-mail: sandhya.krishnan@emory.edu

Twitter: @sandhya221b

My love of science began with identifying plants in the backcountry of the wild west. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin Madison with my B.S. in Botany, Environmental Science, and Conservation Biology, I scouted for native plant populations across the west on teams with the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and the botanic gardens in California and Utah. While I love the backcountry, folks kept asking me about the plants growing in the cities and I eventually turned my attention to urban ecology. I finished my PhD here at the University of Colorado Boulder studying our urban trees in 2022. During this degree is when I found my love of teaching field courses and place-based education research. I worked with members of the REACH lab to design a Course Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) focused on preservation of heritage urban apple trees. As a postdoctoral researcher in the REACH lab, I am continuing development of place-based curricula to engage undergraduates in research in partnership with instructors from community colleges and institutions primarily enrolling underserved populations. Our project is called A Power of Place Learning Experience & Research Network (APPLE R Net) to Support Community College Student Success and Civic Engagement. I will be investigating how students’ sense of belonging to their communities, scientific civic engagement, and intent to persist in the sciences may be impacted after their participation in a CURE.

I love geology. I love art and I love teaching . The intersection of these elements defines the core of who I am as a geologist and discipline-based education researcher. I grew up in India and completed my B.Sc. (Honours) in Geology and M.Sc. (Honours) in Applied Geology from Jadavpur University in Kolkata. I started teaching when I was an undergrad and I loved interacting with students. During my graduate school, I cooked rocks in the lab. In more scientific terms, I used high-pressure temperature experiments in the lab to simulate conditions in the earth’s interior to understand the formation of continents. I loved working in the lab, but I really missed teaching and interacting with students. During this time, I continued to volunteer at various outreach events, STEM festivals and STEM Camps. I also worked at the Rice Center of Academic and Professional communication to pursue my interest in science writing and communication. In the last year of grad school, I took a class in teaching and pedagogy, and it opened my eyes to the world of education research. After I graduated from Rice with a Ph.D. in Earth, Environment and Planetary Sciences in 2019, I went to New Zealand to pursue another PhD. Degree in GeoEducation. During this time, I continued my work in teaching and outreach through professional development with teachers, designing curricula to teach about volcanoes both in K-12 setting and for undergraduate education. I also had the privilege of working with Indigenous communities in Aotearoa NZ to co-design educational resources with them. The combination of my research and teaching experiences has led me to get more excited about how we teach geology in the Anthropocene. My current research at CU Boulder is focused on understanding experiences of incoming graduate students with an emphasis on program design and evaluation of the FiredUp program I am always excited about innovative ways to teach geology to students of different age groups and am open for collaborations across disciplines to support student learning.

Email: Sriparna.saha@colorado.edu

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthwhisperer_20/

PhD student

At the onset of my academic career, my goal was to become a plant biologist. However, after working as a teaching assistant I realized how much I enjoyed pedagogy. Thus, I transitioned from a molecular biologist to a DBER researcher where I now get to investigate student-centered learning approaches in STEM. My dissertation involves investigating the impact of community-engaged (CE) CUREs on student's scientific civic engagement. This led to designing and teaching my own CE CURE as part of the Boulder Apple Tree Project and creating a validated survey that measures student's scientific civic engagement. I am particularly interested in using my graduate training in psychometrics. mixed-methods and phenomenology in the realm of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (IDEA). This work would entail retaining under-served STEM students, designing participatory action research projects in STEM, and building community-institution relationships. In my spare time, I love to cook, travel and indulge in the rich delicacies that Denver has to offer. And like a lot of folks during the pandemic, I have amassed a growing collection of 40+ houseplants.

PhD Student

Since completing a B.S. in Environmental and Forest Biology from the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, I have had the pleasure of working as a research assistant with many exciting plant science labs across the country. This work has allowed me to explore mycorrhizal structures in loblolly pine, breeding system studies in native Hawaiian flora, and flower color evolution with fantastic scientists and educators. More recently, I have worked with the Boulder Apple Tree Project as a project coordinator. In this capacity I have been able to work with students, researchers, and community members towards a goal of mapping and measuring the apple trees of Boulder County and beyond. My research interests include expanding course-based undergraduate research experiences into community college classrooms, engaging those students with community members through long-term studies of local trees, and professional development for community college professors to encourage research in their institutions. Outside of research I can be found running (love the NYC marathon!), reading, baking (so much baking), and tagging along on my kids' adventures (marching band, comic con, penguins, travel). My husband and I are preparing to be empty nesters and hope to kayak (new to us!) in beautiful places (that will also be new to us!).

PhD Student

I got both my Undergraduate and Master’s degree here at CU Boulder, where I have been studying Ecology for the better half of a decade. Both my undergraduate thesis and Master’s degree were focused on how climate change is indirectly impacting alpine plant communities at Niwot Ridge through a process called shrubification. I've also worked on bryophytes in the canopies of Acer macrophyllum trees in the Hoh Rainforest, with native forbs in the grasslands of eastern Oregon, and locally on restoration ecology in the foothills of Boulder.

Though I love classical ecology, my doctorate is focused on the most interesting and complex ecological community - undergraduates at CU. I am mainly interested in exploring creativity in STEM classrooms, trying to both quantify it and design environments where we promote creativity in undergraduate STEM students. I am also passionate about increasing diversity in STEM fields.

When I'm getting paid to read or think, you can find me climbing, hiking, backpacking, and tending to my various animals. I am beyond excited to be a part of the REACH lab, and am open to any and all collaborations with other students, labs, and departments!

"The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone." - Bill Mollison

“Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” - Malcolm X

I am originally from Medellin, Colombia (City of Eternal Spring), and moved to Colorado in 2012. I received my BA degree in 2017 from the University of Colorado Boulder (Go BUFF!) with a double major in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Spanish Language & Literature. During my undergraduate, I worked on two different research projects: Exploring how insect phenology may influence the fitness of the Mountain Blue Bird; and isotope analysis to understand how fragmentation alters food-web structure in a large-scale, long-term fragmentation experiment in southeastern Australia.

I completed my master's in biology from Miami University (OH) in 2021. My program's emphasis was on inquiry-driven education, environmental stewardship, and global understanding through firsthand experiences abroad. For my Ph.D. work, I am particularly interested in biological curriculum design through equitable and diverse knowledge, as well as the development of early scientists and the experiences that led them into the STEM field.