March was a very busy month for me with travel across four different states - Michigan to Florida to Colorado, then back to Michigan, a quick visit to Iowa, then back to Florida!

While in Florida the first time we had our long-awaited Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference (SEEC 2016) hosted by the FSU bio grad students. In Colorado, we had a working group for our Data Nuggets NSF DRK-12 grant, which was very productive and fun! It was great to meet the other collaborators in person, too. Finally, I even was able to drive to Iowa and visit family for a holiday (Easter) for the first time since 2009 (normally we fly). Now that I'm back in Florida, it's crunch time to finish up my dissertation work in time for my defense (2 months and 5 days away!!).

But, I did get a chance to share some of the exciting work I'm doing for my postdoc at the BEACON Center for their weekly blog posts. Check it out here!!

After our 'big' snow last week, I was very glad that the CREATE for STEM mini-conference still was taking place! This MSU research institute strives to improve teaching and learning in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines from grades K-16. For the fourth year this one afternoon event was filled with many faculty, postdocs, graduate students, teachers, and administrators for two poster sessions and a keynote speaker (Dr. James Pellegrino, pictured here). As a relative newbie at MSU, it was great to meet more people and learn about the fabulous research topics being explored, as well as catching up with some familiar faces!

One of the big areas in education research right now seems to be aligning teaching practices with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and developing assessments to determine whether those practices actually advance their intended learning outcomes. Although NGSS is geared for K-12, it has a useful framework to inform undergraduate teaching and learning (Cooper et al. 2015). At the poster session I was also impressed with work being done to automate grading of student written responses, which even has its own research group -  ​Automated Analysis of Constructed Response. Besides the time savings for instructors, these tools can simultaneously provide data for education research to determine which concepts students have the most difficulty and why. Other areas I learned about looked at retention/attendance in a flipped vs. traditional lecture course, student reasoning on interdisciplinary phenomena, project-based large-enrollment lab courses, student perception of their science identify, and pre-service teacher education that includes field-based research.

Overall I really enjoyed the mini-conference and just wish it had gone on a little longer - so many great projects to learn about and people to meet!

Undergraduate diversity travel awards are available to attend Evolution 2016, June 17-21 in Austin, TX! Find out more and apply online.
 
The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and the BEACON Center are funding a cohort of diverse undergraduates from throughout the U.S. to present a poster, receive mentoring, and participate in career-oriented activities at the annual Evolution conference. The application deadline is Monday, April 18th, and decisions will be announced by Tuesday, April 26th. Applications are welcomed from all U.S. undergraduates, and the admissions goal is to create a diverse pool of students. Find out more about the Evolution conference here.

They also need mentors (grad students, postdocs, and faculty) for the undergraduate awardees. This is a fantastic program to get involved with, so if you plan to go to Evolution 2016 definitely check it out!!