This week, J was awarded an NSF (EHR Core Research):Buidling capacity in STEM education research (CSR:BCSER) grant to understand how student identities shape STEM retention across all STEM majors at South.  This grant will focus on exploring in-class interpersonal relationships among students and between faculty and students.  This award will fund J and education research at South for the next 2 years.

We are on the hunt for post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduates interested in STEM education research!

This afternoon, J presented some of the ongoing perceptions of diverse identities within STEM courses at the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER). 

We are super excited to have Kaylin Bruening join the Henning lab! Kaylin is a geography major and marine sciences major and is interested in conversation and invasive species!  Kaylin is going to be working on documenting spatial structure in invasive apple snails in Langan Park prior to a large multi-million dollar removal effort in collaboration with Mobile Bay National Estuarine Program (NEP).  

J and Cissy Ballen were selected to co-present the plenary talk at the annual EDU-STEM meeting on July 22nd.  J & Cissy delivered a talk entitled: Addressing intersectionality in Biology Education Research: the power of collaborative networks. 

J was out with Mobile Bay National Estuarine Program (NEP) removing apple snails this morning.  In 3 hours, J was able to remove over 300 egg casings and collect over 50 adults from Langan Park!

The University of South Alabama and the College of Arts and Sciences recently spotlighted recent research by J and colleagues from University of Konstanz, Michigan State University, and Auburn University published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biology (ProcB) on June 24th. J and colleagues explore the demographic makeup of commonly used Biology textbooks in Introductory Biology classes across the United States. Textbooks shape teaching and learning in introductory biology and highlight scientists as potential role models who are responsible for significant discoveries. Authors explore a potential demographic mismatch between the scientists featured in textbooks and the students who use textbooks to learn core concepts in biology. Authors found that while textbooks are filled with classic examples of early discoveries that were performed by white men, more contemporary examples reflect the inclusion of women and scientists of color within biology. However, the inclusion of contributions by female scientists of color in textbooks lag woefully behind their representation in the field.

For the full university press release click here, for the full article click here, and for a blog post by the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biology click here.  

Our new paper in Proc B exploring racial and binary gender representation in introductory biology textbooks is receiving a lot of international attention. Overall, we found that even though the scientists and their discoveries that textbooks are choosing to highlight are becoming more diverse, several groups of scientists including, women of color scientists are woefully under-represented in introductory college textbooks if we compare to the diversification of scientists in the field and especially when comparing to the demographic makeup of the target audience (US undergraduate biology majors).

link to the full article here

The Henning lab is looking for multiple directed studies students for the Fall of 2020 that are interested in aquatic and terrestrial invasive species monitoring projects, or any other ongoing lab projects. We are partnering up with Mobile Bay National Estuarine Program to help lead projects that help us monitor invasive apple snail populations in Langan Park and invasive plant species along the 3-mile creek watershed, including sites on campus.  Email Jeremiah if you are interested!

We are excited to have Polly Straughn joining the Henning Lab.  Polly is a marine sciences major and is going to be leading some work to characterize the biotic and abiotic properties that are shaping sea turtle nesting patterns and survival in a few of our coastal Alabama beaches in collaboration with Alabama Coastal Foundation and Share the Beach.  See the People page on more about Polly and all of us!

Tropical storm Cristobal aided our Marine Botany course by washing up many great specimens of macro algae for us to view under the scope, like this Sargassum sp. We are now in the home stretch of this course as we shift into understanding how global change is impacting current & future marine plant communities and learning how to calculate primary productivity!