Last Thursday, Feb 4, Bob Mathieu provided testimony on Strengthening Undergraduate and Graduate STEM Education to the House Subcommittee on Research and Science Education. His testimony is available at http://tiny.cc/R7Is3.

 

Mathieu spoke to a need for increased teacher preparation in STEM higher education that would help strengthen STEM literacy  Read More »

CIRTL Director Bob Mathieu will be providing testimony to the US House Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Research and Science Education on Thursday Feb 4. A link to his comments will appear on the CIRTL Café later in the week.

 

 Read More »

As I mentioned here a few days ago, Richard Cyr (Biology, Penn State) visited Vanderbilt on Tuesday.  He gave two talks, one on faculty careers in the sciences, and one teaching large science classes.  I shared some highlights from the two talks on the new Vanderbilt Center for Teaching Twitter account as he was presenting.  You can see all of these tweets in one place right here.  We were glad to have Richard join us for the day!

Richard Cyr of Penn State University is visiting Vanderbilt University today.  The Vanderbilt Center for Teaching will be "live-tweeting" his sessions today, one on academic careers in the sciences, the other on teaching large science courses.  Follow our "tweets" on Twitter.

At CIRTL we contend that diversity leads to improved learning experiences and better products.   Part of this argument rests on the belief that by embracing a diversity of life experiences and perspectives we also embrace different ways of thinking and paths of synthesis.  And those different ways of thinking can increase the possibility of new insights and understandings.

While this sounds plausible, the argument is strengthened by concrete examples. What are some “different ways of thinking” that are not often represented and are useful in the STEM disciplines?   Read More »