Here are a couple of my former students, mid- brain lab in 2010. Fun story, both Kayla Brooks (front) and Nick Petersen (background) ended up working in my thesis lab. Nick worked with me directly, wrote an award-winning thesis, and is an author on one of my papers! Here were our goals:
We did our best to accomplish these goals through a few methods. First, we created a lab as a kind of self-guided tour through the sheep brain. Students could follow simple, step-by-step instructions to successfully dissect out what they needed and when. Of course, in practice, there are still the occasional mishap, and this protocol by no means precluded the need for a great instructor. This way, students didn't have to worry about what to do next, they would just have to worry about what we wanted to worry about--the content. Specifically, we directed students to stop and think about what they were doing by infusing a series of questions throughout the lab. These questions required them to think, make hypotheses and/or do a bit of research to figure out the answers. Some questions had straightforward answers (look up the function of this or that), but others were open for interpretation, and some didn't even necessarily have correct answers. Here is an example to highlight what we were trying to accomplish, regarding the cranial nerves: How do you use anatomical information to infer the function of a nerve? Here are a few factors you may or may not find helpful to consider. Does it help to know:
Explain whether or not you can answer these questions about an individual nerve from gross anatomy (looking at and dissecting the brain from the body as you are doing today). What other information would you need? As you can see, rather than just telling students to identify as many nerves as they could, we took the opportunity to ask students to think about structure, location, and think about how that relationship lends itself to function. Like most questions we posed, they were not necessarily tough to answer, nor did they require essays to answer, but they did require a bit of thought. I did a bit of testing to see how students reacted to the new format. The brain lab lasted two weeks, so I used the second week as a rough comparison group. The first week, where we used this refurbished walk through, included the removal of the dura mater, identification of external structures, and cutting the brain in half and looking at the mid-sagittal structures. In the second week, students were instructed to do a blunt hippocampal dissection to uncover the hippocampus and parts of the midbrain, as well as make slices to identify and find structures like those in the basal ganglia. In this second week, we used our previous methods of giving them a standard sheep brain dissection manual and locating structures, without giving them a more specific walk through instructions or thought questions. Although the two weeks were different in many ways and the comparison is by no means definitive, I found it heartening that students found the first week both more enjoyable and more effective than the second week. To take the above data, I got approval from Cornell's Institutional Review Board! I enjoyed making this lab, and have gotten a lot of positive feedback from it. I'd be more than happy to talk anyone who might want to try this out, and again, please let me know if you want me to send you more resources!
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Since I've been slacking on writing entries, I thought I'd start with an easy, and hopefully helpful one. If you are interested in STEM diversity, or in applying for a policy fellowship, hopefully this will be helpful!
Here is my entry for my (successful) application to the AAAS science and technology policy fellowship. This is part of the second round of the application process, and goes along with a skype interview. The prompt was a fun and important one to write about: "How can you improve diversity in STEM fields." I got some help from friends and colleagues, which is what many fellows I know have done to improve the quality of their memos. Its tough to fit everything into one page, and I tried to fit in as many actionable items as I could. The world’s economy is increasingly dependent upon innovations in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). To be competitive, we must increase our STEM workforce. Arguably, the best way to do so is by increasing diversity in STEM fields. 2013 data suggests that 69% of college professors were men. Although there is less division in younger faculty likely due to institutional policy reform, this highlights the continued need for programs to support women, underrepresented minorities (URMs) and people with disabilities in STEM (Goal 1). A complex series of barriers to success, motivation, and inclusion occur at every training stage in STEM. First, there are barriers to STEM interest in K-12. Girls as early as middle school self-report lower interest aptitude for science. Additionally, many URM and people with disabilities, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, are less likely to receive a science education that inspires and motivates interest in science. There are separate barriers that especially deter women, minorities, and people with disabilities from becoming STEM faculty after being trained (Goal 2). The following recommendations are aimed primarily but not exclusively towards including and retaining women, URMs and people with disabilities in STEM fields in order to increase numbers of STEM-trained individuals overall. To promote diversity in STEM, I therefore recommend changes on two fronts: 1.) Motivating and inspiring primary and secondary students to pursue post-secondary training in STEM fields, and 2.) Retaining and supporting trained scientists in STEM fields. Goal 1: Increasing demographic representation in post-secondary STEM students. To inspire students to pursue STEM fields, we have to utilize evidence-based teaching methods in K-12. These techniques focus on depth of knowledge, problem solving, and the scientific process and produce better outcomes than traditional breadth education focused on memorization. Importantly, these techniques preferentially bolster performance and attitudes of women and minority students in STEM subjects. Specific Recommendations: To increase-evidence based teaching, I recommend 1. Advocating state and local participation in teaching through initiatives like the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and 2. Revising standardized testing procedures to align with these standards. I additionally recommend utilizing STEM PhDs to provide vital role models to students and to enrich STEM education via expertise in science, similar to the recommendations of the 2010 Committee on Attracting Science and Mathematics Ph.D.s to Secondary School Teaching (National Research Council). Specifically, I recommend 1. Attracting and facilitating K-12 teaching certification for those with advanced STEM training, 2. Creating and/or supporting outreach programs for graduate students and faculty to attend schools (like the NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program or the defunct NSF GK-12 program), and 3. Creating financial incentives for STEM PhDs to influence K-12 science standards and standardized testing mentioned above. Program success will be measured by STEM PhD participation in K-12 education: number/quality of educational grant applications, number of STEM PhDs working in K-12. Student success will be measured through standardized examinations and number and demographic representation in students entering post-secondary schools to study STEM fields. Goal 2: Increasing demographic representation among STEM faculty. Many STEM fields now require several years of post-doctoral experience to be considered competitive for faculty positions. The respective delay in career stability poses significant financial and personal barriers to pursuing STEM careers long term. The following recommendations will help retain scientists by increasing support and job security especially during early career stages. Specific Recommendations: First, I recommend supporting initiatives like the NSF ADVANCE program that use evidence-based research to discover and correct reasons for inequality among faculty. Along these lines, I recommend supporting young scientists socially by mandating diversity, inclusion and mentorship training for faculty with public funding in order to facilitate student training during critical phases. Next, to support women, URMs and disabled scientists at these personally and professionally critical times, I recommend the following: 1. Improving standards for graduate student and post-doctoral benefits such as maternity and paternity leave, 2. Increasing NSF/NIH minimum pay standards for post-doctoral associates on federal grants to match the level of training and importance to scientific progress, and 3. Facilitating support of long term or ‘permanent’ post-docs, research associates, and part-time workers. To measure success for these changes, the demographics and absolute numbers of STEM faculty can be measured, particularly in reference to availability of positions. |
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