Good News March 2021
Faculty News
Christine Broussard (Biology) National Dialogue on Transforming STEM Teaching Evalu-ation in Higher Education Planning committee member and presenter at a convening to broaden participation in the national dialogue around STEM teaching evaluation hosted by the Na-tional Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Board on Science Education (BOSE) Roundtable on Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Education. Virtual Events January 2021.
Dr. Broussard submitted an NSF IUSE HSI grant with Vanessa Preisler and Karlita Warren. STEM JEDI: A Model for Institutional Transformation. A project focused on reduc-ing the outcome disparities by providing resources and training that allow faculty to reflect on their own and the institution’s biases, prepare them to effectively utilize culturally sustaining practices (CSP) in their teaching, and to use meaningful measures of effective and inclusive teaching to evaluate these practices.
Emily Cilli-Turner (Math), Justin Dun-myre, Thomas Mahoney & Chad Wiley, Mastery-Based Grading: Build-a-Syllabus Workshop was selected by the PRIMUS journal as one of 2020’s Editor’s Picks! Dr. Cilli-Turner and Dr. Gail Tang submitted an invited book chapter with their research group: Towards a New Paradigm in Defining Mathematical Crea-tivity: Inclusion of the Tertiary Student Perspective.
Heidy Contreras (Biology) was awarded a grant from the Cali-fornia Health Consortium for a program she started called Stu-dents Against Second Hand Smoke (SASS). The program is a col-laboration between our ULV-SACNAS Chapter and the CHC, focused on providing information about the effects of secondhand smoke to our surrounding communities.
Dr. Contreras has been awarded a National Geographic COVID-19 remote learning emergency fund for educator’s grant, in collaboration with her partners in Guatemala, to fund a project aimed at developing a culturally relevant, inquiry-based research project that can be used by anyone teaching social and environmental justice, and ecology.
Dr. Contreras submitted an NSF HIS grant (Research and In-novation through Culturally Relevant Education in STEM: RAICES) in collaboration with Leticia Arellano-Morales, Stacey Darling-Novak, Todd Lorenz and Nixon Mwebi fo-cused on using culturally relevant education to improve the re-tention and graduation rates of STEM students, especially in Biology & Chemistry Departments.
Gail Tang and Emily Cilli-Turner (Math) were recently awarded the MAA Tensor Strengthening Underrepresented Minority Mathematics Achievement grant. The project is titled Pomona’s Rising Youth in Mathematics Empowerment (PRYME).
Tatiana Tatarinova (Biology) was one of the organizers of the annual conference of the Russian American Science Association and chaired one session, December 2020. Dr. Tatarinova has been named by Forbes to be in the Top 10 Russian Female Sci-entists; published a chapter in Rice Genome Engineering and Gene Editing; edited BMC genetics special issue; and has released a new music album.
Pablo Weaver (Biology) and student alumni co-authors, Steph-any Gonzalez, Summer O’Brien, Kaylee Cruz, Vanessa Mo-rales and Pablo F. Weaver “High egg rejection and low aggres-sive responses of Mountain Bluebirds (Sialia currucoides) toward Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater),” The Wilson Journal of Ornithology 132(2), 466-473, (5 February 2021). https://doi.org/10.1676/1559-4491-132.2.466
Alumni News
Rachel Frantz (Math ‘19) was awarded a summer internship with the mathematical and computational epidemiological team at Los Alamos National Laboratory modeling diseases spread by mosquitos.
