Image: Members of the biochemistry and molecular biology department are doing their part in changing STEM education at research universities. Paula Lemons, an associate professor in BMB, is a principal investigator of the $3 million National Science Foundation grant seeking to allow teams of faculty members to "create, implement and assess active learning materials to help students better develop STEM knowledge and skills," according to the article, with the intention to disseminate research findings to "improve student learning outcomes at UGA and at research institutions nationwide." Lemons and a team of four co–principal investigators will "work with senior administrators as well as department heads and other faculty members in biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, physics and statistics to bring the total number of collaborators to more than 100 over five years." One of Lemons' co–principal investigators is Erin Dolan, a Georgia Athletic Association Professor of Innovative Science Education in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology. “We were in a really good position to secure this grant because of a number of things at UGA that help us leverage the funding, like the Science Learning Center and its SCALE-UP classrooms, the small class hiring initiative and the active learning initiative that’s currently underway,” Lemons told UGA Today. “These are all investments in instruction that enable us to design and test better learning experiences for students. “The goal is not to do away with the lecture format,” Lemons continued, “but for instructors to be able to use evidence rather than tradition to choose the teaching method that best serves students.” You can read the full article at UGA Today.
