Past OUSTA

2011 OUSTA Win­ner
 Melanie Cooper: A fac­ulty mem­ber in the Clem­son Uni­ver­sity Chem­istry Depart­ment since 1987, Melanie M. Cooper is the alumni dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry there. She was also recently appointed interim chair of the Depart­ment of Engi­neer­ing and Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion at Clemson.

Her research has focused on meth­ods to assess and improve stu­dents’ con­cep­tual under­stand­ing and problem-solving abil­i­ties and strate­gies, using inter­ven­tions that pro­mote metacog­ni­tive activ­ity. An out­growth of this research has been the devel­op­ment and assess­ment of evidence-driven, research-based cur­ric­ula, includ­ing the NSF-funded gen­eral chem­istry cur­ricu­lum, Chem­istry, Life, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing. Dr. Cooper received her under­grad­u­ate, grad­u­ate, and PhD degrees from the Uni­ver­sity of Man­ches­ter in Eng­land, and she car­ried out her post­doc­toral work in organic chem­istry before turn­ing to chem­istry edu­ca­tion as her area of research.

2010 OUSTA Winner

Dr. Robert Beich­ner deliv­ered the Mar­jorie Gard­ner Lec­ture on Fri­day, March 11 at the NSTA/SCST National Meet­ings in San Fran­cisco.  The title of his lec­ture is “The Student-Centered Active Learn­ing Envi­ron­ment for Under­grad­u­ate Pro­grams (SCALE-UP) Project.” In this talk, Dr Beich­ner dis­cussed the need for reform, the SCALE-UP class­room envi­ron­ment, and exam­ine the find­ings of stud­ies of learning.

A recip­i­ent of numer­ous awards for teach­ing, use of edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy and ser­vice, Dr. Beich­ner has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to under­grad­u­ate sci­ence edu­ca­tion through his inno­v­a­tive work with the “Student-Centered Active Learn­ing Envi­ron­ment for Under­grad­u­ate Pro­gram (SCALE-UP).  The SCALE-UP project takes teach­ing prac­tices that have proven effec­tive in small classes, such as group learn­ing, and ampli­fies them into class­rooms for large classes. Dr. Beich­ner is also a national leader in pub­lish­ing and schol­ar­ship. In addi­tion to author­ing nine books, includ­ing the lead­ing intro­duc­tory calculus-based physics text in the coun­try, Dr. Beich­ner was found­ing edi­tor of Phys­i­cal Review Spe­cial Top­ics – Physics Edu­ca­tion Research, a jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety. Dr. Beich­ner received his award at the SCST Lun­cheon dur­ing the NSTA/SCST National Con­fer­ence in Philadel­phia, PA on March 20, 2010.

2009 OUSTA Winner

The 2009 win­ner of the Soci­ety for Col­lege Sci­ence Teach­ers (SCST) Out­stand­ing Under­grad­u­ate Sci­ence Teacher Award (OUSTA) is Dr. Dee Silverthorn.

Dr. Sil­ver­thorn is cur­rently a Senior Lec­turer in the School of Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas at Austin. Dr. Sil­ver­thorn was selected for her inno­v­a­tive work in teach­ing phys­i­ol­ogy.  More specif­i­cally, for her efforts at increas­ing the use of inquiry-based teach­ing meth­ods at her own Uni­ver­sity, where she has pre­vi­ously won 12 teach­ing awards, and also for help­ing instruc­tors around the world learn and imple­ment inno­v­a­tive teach­ing strate­gies that pro­mote active learn­ing.  In addi­tion to her numer­ous key-note speeches and pub­lished research arti­cles, Dr. Sil­ver­thorn served as Edi­tor and Chief for Advanced in Phys­i­ol­ogy Edu­ca­tion from 2001 to 2007. Dr. Sil­ver­thorn received her award at the SCST Lun­cheon dur­ing the NSTA/SCST National Con­ven­tion in New Orleans, LA, on March 21th, 2009.

Thank you to Springer for their con­tin­ued sup­port of our OUSTA Award