2012 OUSTA Winner

2011–2012 OUSTA Win­ner Announced

 The 2011–2012 win­ner of the Soci­ety for Col­lege Sci­ence Teach­ers (SCST) Out­stand­ing Under­grad­u­ate Sci­ence Teacher Award (OUSTA) is Dr Kim­berly Tan­ner.

This year’s award is co-sponsored by the Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com). Dr. Tan­ner is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity. A neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist by train­ing, Tan­ner is an inno­v­a­tive teacher who employs inquiry-based learn­ing and inter­ac­tive meth­ods in her highly rated classes for biol­ogy majors, non-majors, and sci­ence edu­ca­tion grad­u­ate stu­dents. She is a national leader in biol­ogy edu­ca­tion research whose ground­break­ing work has helped to define and raise the vis­i­bil­ity of sci­ence edu­ca­tion spe­cial­ists in the higher edu­ca­tion com­mu­nity.  Her cur­rent research addresses the impact of scientist-teacher part­ner­ship mod­els, the devel­op­ment of novel approaches to class­room assess­ment, and the effec­tive­ness of approaches to pro­mot­ing gen­der equity in the sci­ences. Dr. Tan­ner will receive the award at the SCST Col­lege Lun­cheon held dur­ing the National Sci­ence Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion — SCST National Con­ven­tion in Indi­anapo­lis on March 30, 2012.

The Soci­ety for Col­lege Sci­ence Teach­ers is a national orga­ni­za­tion estab­lished in 1979 to pro­mote the schol­ar­ship of col­lege sci­ence teach­ing.  SCST is an affil­i­ate of the National Sci­ence Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (NSTA), founded in 1944 and head­quar­tered in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia.  NSTA is the largest orga­ni­za­tion in the world com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing excel­lence and inno­va­tion in sci­ence teach­ing and learn­ing for all. NSTA’s cur­rent mem­ber­ship of more than 55,000 includes sci­ence teach­ers, sci­ence super­vi­sors, admin­is­tra­tors, sci­en­tists, busi­ness and indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and oth­ers involved in and com­mit­ted to sci­ence edu­ca­tion.  SCST’s pur­pose is to pro­vide a forum for inter­dis­ci­pli­nary inter­ac­tion among teach­ers of sci­ence at all insti­tu­tions of higher edu­ca­tion. Cur­rently there are approx­i­mately 800 mem­bers from all of the states and sev­eral for­eign countries.

SCST estab­lished the OUSTA to rec­og­nize the achieve­ments of schol­ars who have enhanced the pro­fes­sion as out­stand­ing teach­ers of sci­ence. This annual award is based upon a selec­tion process that eval­u­ates nom­i­nees accord­ing to the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories:  1) teach­ing excel­lence, as demon­strated through teach­ing phi­los­o­phy and effec­tive­ness, teach­ing inno­va­tions, and course and cur­ric­ula devel­op­ment; 2) schol­ar­ship, demon­strated through pub­li­ca­tions in sci­ence edu­ca­tion, pre­sen­ta­tions, grants received, and other forms of schol­ar­ship includ­ing discipline-based research; and 3) ser­vice to sci­ence edu­ca­tion, stu­dents, the pro­fes­sion, sci­en­tific and edu­ca­tional orga­ni­za­tions, the nominee’s insti­tu­tion, local teach­ers and their school sys­tems, and the gen­eral pub­lic with the over­all goal of enhanc­ing under­stand­ing of sci­en­tific issues.