EDGE Administrator Liz Guzy heads to DC as a 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Community Engagement Fellows Program

Liz Guzy, the administrator for EDGE and the UW Superfund Program, is one of 23 2019 AAAS Community Engagement Fellows headed to DC for a week of professional development activities.

It foretold great things when Liz Guzy won the University of Washington (UW) Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) staff award in 2016, after only a year in her position. Sure enough, today Guzy will head to Washington D.C. to begin her fellowship with the 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Community Engagement Fellows Program.  

            The AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program provides a rare professional development and networking opportunity for people with jobs focused on cultivating engagement and collaboration within communities of scientists. It was created in recognition of the importance of this work, and also because people who play this role often do so without formal training or professional support. As stated by AAAS, the goals of the program are to:

Professionalize and institutionalize the role of community management within scientific organizations;

Provide professional development resources to individuals who manage communities and collaborations in research organizations and scientific organizations;

Collect and disseminate knowledge about building strong collaborations and communities.

            Guzy is perfectly suited to the fellowship, given her four years of experience as Administrator of two large National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences research centers at UW— the Interdisciplinary Center on Exposures, Diseases, Genomics & Environment (EDGE) and Superfund Research Program (UW SRP). The more than 100 members of these two groups represent many UW departments, including: DEOHS, Medicine, Pharmacy, Pediatrics, Genome Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Biochemistry, Pathology, Nursing, and Bioethics and Humanities as well as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute and Seattle Children’s Hospital.

            Despite the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration in the grants that fund her Centers, Guzy has noticed that many researchers often continue to collaborate only with those in their own labs. Her goal in undertaking the fellowship in her words is “to learn how to foster interactions that lead to novel collaborations across disciplines and departments,” and to “serve my research community better using the tools and connections that are available through the AAAS Fellowship.”

            After the coming week of professional development in Washington DC, Guzy will continue to engage with the other 22 members of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program through monthly webinars, small group project teamwork, a mid-year training and experience exchange in DC in June, and an end-of-the-year debrief in DC in December. Along the way, she’ll develop her own community playbook to communicate her strategy and tactics for building community and collaboration among the members of EDGE and UW SRP.

UW EDGE Center co-organizes a trans-disciplinary workshop to discuss the future of local fisheries

By Victoria Pinheiro, Nereus Program Strategic Communications Lead, the original version of this story first appeared here.

Nereus Program Policy Director Yoshi Ota, and Swinomish tribal elder Larry Campbell converse during a Fish and Future breakout session. Photo Credit: Colby K. Neal

On April 3rd, 2018, tribal representatives, students, and academics gathered to discuss a pressing issue for coastal indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest: the future of the fish they’ve relied on since time immemorial. Climate change, pollution, and toxic algae blooms are threatening the survival of salmon and shellfisheries relied upon by both the Native American tribes in Washington State and First Nations in British Columbia. These fisheries represent significant nutritional and economic value to both peoples, and they also have deep running cultural importance. All three aspects were considered during the gathering entitled Fish and Future held at the University of Washington’s wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (“Intellectual House” in the Luhshootseed language). The building was inspired by the traditional Long Houses of the Coastal Salish people, with lofty cedar walls and beams overlaid with indigenous artwork. Traditional song and drumming filled the space as Willard Bill Jr, Cultural Director of the Muckleshoot Tribe and his son, Justice Bill, delivered a welcome prayer to commence the meeting. The words, music, and setting created an unrivaled sense of place and purpose. “We are here,” Bill told us, referring to the Indigenous People of the Pacific Northwest. “We are alive and strong. We are from here – we’ve never been from anywhere else.”

Justice Bill and his father, Cultural Director of the Muckleshoot Tribe Willard Bill Jr., lead welcome prayer to commence the meeting. Photo Credit: Colby K. Neal

The environmental threats to the fisheries relied upon by 37 million coastal indigenous populations are born from the actions of developed nations, making food sovereignty for these groups a pressing issue of global equity. “Forty-one percent of First Nations people in BC experience food insecurity,” explained Dr. Laurie Chan. “Ninety-one percent of people surveyed want to eat more traditional food but simply don’t have access to it any longer. This is an issue for a number of reasons; one being because diets are healthier when more traditional food is eaten than market food.” And conditions are likely to get worse, Chan explained. “Under the influence of climate change, projections show a considerable decline of fish stocks along the coast of British Columbia. This could result in a decrease of healthy food and essential nutrient intake and also has a negative impact on the well being of the people’s culture.” In other words, this isn’t just a loss of nutrients; it’s a loss of heritage.

Dr. Sara Jo Breslow of the University of Washington's Center for Creative Conservation led workshop participants in an interactive reading from her play The Last Best Place which was created using transcripts from interviews with local farmers, scientists, and tribal members. Photo Credit: Colby K. Neal

The format of the gathering was innovated to inspire and generate creative thinking about what needs to be done. Academic talks and presentations were interspersed with a film screening of Colby K. Neal’s Broken Fish and an interactive reading from The Last Best Place, a play about salmon, people, and habitat by Dr. Sara Jo Breslow. Breslow’s play arranges the words of tribal members, farmers and scientists taken down during anthropological interviews to tell the story of the human-salmon ecosystem in the Pacific Northwest. She gathered eleven members of the audience around a table and handed them each a script. “But there are days when I wonder, if all what they really want, is control over what you do? Or do they really want to save fish?… And you know, you might not understand this, but my family’s been here for 110 years. That’s a long time. This land is my heritage and I intend to pass it on to my grandchildren,” read one participant, speaking the words of a farmer frustrated by restoration regulations. “It staggers me that someone could say that to, say, members of an Indian tribe,” replied another participant, speaking the words of a tribal staff person. “That, you know, to – to whom one hundred and ten years is not even a blink of an eye.” Participants were able to experience the perspective of the character they played, regardless of how different it was from their own, and speak the words of another human with feeling and empathy.

The morning’s proceedings inspired a generative planning session in the afternoon. Participants proposed creating a task force to align ongoing efforts, and to integrate Indigenous and western-based sciences to develop strategic adaptation and action plans. “When we take inquiry back to the tribal community, we get history, community, and culture along with the research objective,” said Swinomish tribal elder Larry Campbell. The meeting ended on a note of progress and excitement about new plans and initiatives inspired by the day’s dialogue. “All of the organizations here presumably started with a first meeting,” said Dr. Elaine Faustman. “I know this meeting will be the start of something new for many of you.”

Engaging Large Groups in Discussion Through Play

Although the title of the article on the UW Center for Teaching and Learning's web site - Classroom Participation & Stuffed Animals - would likely put off many faculty members, the author provided me with a great idea to share with instructors. When trying to engage a large group of students in discussion, consider making it into a structured game. Bring a stuffed animal (or nerf ball or any soft, throwable object) to class and when you want to open the floor for comments or questions, throw the object to the group. Whoever gets tagged has two choices - comment or pass. That student must keep the game going by throwing the object to someone else who also either comments or passes. This continues until you feel like you've gotten enough input to move on. It's important to try and follow up each comment with some sort of feedback to further everyone’s thinking. As the post points out, "Dallimore et al. (2004) suggest students are likely to actively participate in classroom discussions when: the learners’ ideas and experiences are incorporated into the discussion; the facilitation is active; the classroom environment is supportive; and the instructor provides both positive and constructive feedback."

References:

Dallimore, E.J., Hertenstein, J.H., and Platt, M.B. 2004. Classroom participation and discussion effectiveness: student-generated strategies. Communication Education 53(1): 103-115.

UC Davis on the vanguard of transforming undergraduate STEM teaching practices

Colleges Reinvent Classes to Keep More Students in Science, NY Times, 12/26/2014

This short article is a great overview of how active learning looks in a large introductory level undergraduate science class, why it's worth doing, and what the barriers are to making it happen. It profiles efforts to revamp the way introductory science courses are taught at UC Davis. Some highlights:

• A University of Colorado study did pre- and post-tests on thousands of Introductory Physics students over several years and found that students in "transformed" classes had improved their tests scores by about 50% more than students in traditional classes.
• Transformed classes share certain characteristics: creative uses of technologies, frequent group work in and out of class, use of class time to do problem-solving exercises while instructor move between groups, holding students accountable for readings by having them answer questions about the readings online prior to class, active solicitation of student feedback and responses during class - often through the use of smartphone apps or clickers.
• A UNC study demonstrated that overhauling an intro biology course had improved student performance overall, but had been particularly beneficial for black students and those whose parents had not attended college.
• Employers and government officials have been urging colleges and universities to produce more STEM graduates - especially women and blacks - but at four-year colleges, while 28% of students start out as STEM majors, only 16% graduate with STEM related degrees. The attrition rate is highest among women and blacks.
• Despite the strength of research findings, most college faculty continue to teach intro-level science and math classes in a traditional lecture format. Experts point to several factors for this: the low value placed on teaching at research universities, a reward structure geared towards research publications and grants, faculty members' lack of formal training in educational theory and teaching methods - and their unwillingness to accept help revising their approach to teaching, and faculty hesitation to take on the extra work required to revise a course and a fear of giving up control of what happens in the classroom.
• The UC Davis project takes advantage of resources available from the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon, as well as the work of Nobel Laureate Carl E. Weiman, Eric Mazur, and Doug Lamov.
• Because it can be difficult to tell (especially tenured) faculty that they need to overhaul how they teach, the UC Davis project began by providing intensive pedagogical training and support to  graduate student TAs. They also tested students' grasp of basic concepts before and after traditional introductory lecture courses and used the results to start to convince professors that their students were learning much less than they had thought.

Biology Courses Ditch the Lectures

Biology Courses Ditch the Lectures

The Argument Against Lectures

From the UW Daily back in May of 2014: Undergrads Should Tell Profs "Don’t lecture me"!