Inclusive Teaching. The literature is clear: creating classroom spaces, virtual or in-person, where students feel like they belong is an important step to ensuring students are retained and progress to graduation. Amy Pate , Associate Director for Faculty Support within SOLS, and I ran a session recently, co-hosted by the RISE Center for Research in Inclusive STEM Education , that focused on the frameworks that educators use to evaluate whether a given course or curriculum is designed to create such inclusive spaces. The recording of that session can be found here . The session was well attended and interactive, but perhaps you were not able to attend or you are only now hearing about this topic. Below are the highlights of the ideas presented and the questions we grappled with. We need to start with some definitions Inclusive Pedagogy: A student-centered approach to teaching where instructors create an inviting and engaging learning environment for ALL students with diverse background

The opportunity to attend a university online is an attractive option for many students because of the flexibility in scheduling, the lack of commuting, and the ability to work from wherever. This is a particularly enticing option for individuals working full-time in any capacity such as a 9-5 office job or for taking care of children or other family members. So, as universities begin to develop more of these programs, these online programs open access to college degrees for a larger slice of society. However, who is enrolling in these programs, and are there grade differences for different groups of students in online courses? We know that, on average, students from backgrounds that are historically underrepresented in STEM tend to do worse in the classroom compared to their overrepresented counterparts. This group broadly includes BLNP (Black, Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander) people, women, people of lower socioeconomic status, and first-generation to college students.

The Black Lives Matter movement and protests in Summer 2020 after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade, have prompted many educators and researchers to reflect upon racism in the spaces we occupy. As copies of “How to be an anti-racist” by Ibram X. Kendi flew off the shelves in bookstores, we at the Research for Inclusive STEM Education (RISE) center found ourselves wondering what an anti-racist biology curriculum might look like and what steps we could take to re-imagine the curriculum. In response, we organized a workshop in Fall 2020 where graduate students, instructors, faculty, instructional developers, and other staff members came together to begin to address this question. Here, we share some of the ideas that emerged from those discussions in the hopes that we can continue the dialogue on these critical issues. What are some ways in which racism exists in biology curricula and classrooms? In order to dismantle racism in institutional str

Picture in your mind the best teacher you ever had. Remember what they sounded like, how they decorated the classroom, or how they started a lesson? Think about your experience in this complex learning scape and how it shaped your learning at that time and beyond. Why is this teacher, this memory, so profound? Thinking back on school experiences you may remember certain individuals, may they be teachers, tutors, or other role models, that positively shaped your early education experiences. Whether it was through creative lesson plans, active learning assignments, or flipped classrooms, these educators often leave their mark on a student as mentors that bridged gaps in student learning. When we think of mentorship, it often connotes images of an experienced individual paired with a novice to train them in some specialized skill set: student and professor, trainee and advisor, Jedi and Padawan, and more. In higher education (both undergraduate and graduate school) experience and training