2023-2025 Events
Please see below for our schedule of events for 2023-2025. These events include talks organized by SEISMIC and SEISMIC institutions, as well as events SEISMIC is co-sponsoring, and are open to anyone interested to attend. For more information, please contact our Speaker Events Bureau at seismic.speakers.bureau@umich.edu
Check out our MiVideo channel to see recordings of past SEISMIC events!
Friday, January 31st & Saturday, February 1st, 2025
Four Total Sessions
BRIDGES: Broadening Research & Instructional Designs for Greater Equity in STEM Conference
From the organizers:
We envision this conference to encompass three main pillars: (1) promoting chemistry education practices centered around equity principles, (2) demonstrating how DEI principles can inform chemistry education research, and (3) breaking down academic silos to facilitate interdisciplinary knowledge sharing and skill building. Equity is central to these issues, and permeates through all of these pillars. Our goal is that you leave this conference with a plan of action for creating change both within and beyond your chemistry education practice.
Schedule and Agenda
- Session 1 Friday, January 31st 10:30 am-1:30 pm EST
- Session 2 Friday, January 31st 2:30-5:30 pm EST
- Session 3 Saturday, February 1st 10:30 am-1:30 pm EST
- Session 4 Saturday, February 1st 2:30-5:30 pm EST
This conference is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2150680 and 2150727 Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this conference are those of the organizers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
For questions, please email: bridgesstem@gmail.com
May 30-31, 2024
SELC Public Talk #6: Equity work with resistant colleagues
Speaker: Dr. Russo-Tait is an Assistant Professor in the Cellular Biology department at the University of Georgia, where she leads the ACCESS Lab (Advancing Critical Consciousness, Equity, and Social Justice in STEM). Her research currently involves three strands: STEM faculty beliefs and practices; the experiences of students from minoritized backgrounds in STEM learning environments; and science and social justice curriculum and instruction.
Talk Title: “You have the power to change the system for better or for worse“: Learning from equity-minded and critically conscious STEM faculty
Talk Abstract: This talk will explore how critically conscious STEM faculty use their agency and power to affect change in their spheres of influence. They humanize the classroom, use evidence-based practices, and draw on their political clarity to engage in justice-centered teaching. As mentors, they take responsibility for removing barriers for marginalized students and try to design equitable research environments. As leaders in their departments and disciplinary organizations, they work with others to collectively change (or at least disrupt) norms, policies, and practices.
May 30-31, 2024
SELC Public Talk #5 SELCs as a tool for campus change
Speakers: Tim McKay (University of Michigan), Lizette Muñoz Rojas (University of Pittsburgh), and Marco Molinaro (University of Maryland)
Talk Title: Plenary for the SEISMIC Action for STEM Department Transformation
Friday, February 23rd, 2024
12 – 1 pm ET
SELC Public Talk #4: Developing equity-mindedness
Speakers: Joshua Kuntzman is the Assessment Coordinator and Nate Emery is the STEM Education Coordinator in the Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning at UC Santa Barbara.
Friday, January 12th, 2024
12 – 1 pm ET
SELC Public Talk #3: Exploration of equity reports and tools
Speakers: Marco Molinaro (University of Maryland), Matt Steinwachs (University of California Davis), Chad Brassil (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), and Jeff Gold
Friday, December 1st, 2023
2 – 3 pm ET
SELC Public Talk #2: Equity measurements we should be making
Speaker: Dr. W. Carson Byrd, University of Michigan
Friday, October 27th, 2023
12 – 1 pm ET
SELC Public Talk #1: Addressing student-deficit mindsets
Speaker: Dr. Natasha Turman, University of Michigan
Talk Title: Our students ARE the capital: Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth to Address Student-deficit mindsets in teaching and learning.
Talk Abstract: Student deficit mindsets in education manifest when the dominant culture associates minoritized students’ learning difficulties with the learner’s lived experience, background, and potential lack of preparation (i.e., social and cultural capital). Instead of acknowledging and addressing the structural and systemic barriers that minoritized students navigate daily, an educator operating with this perspective attempts to ‘fix’ the student. A deficit mindset perpetuates stereotypes, causes othering, isolates learners, and widens inequity in the learning environment. Drawing from the work of critical scholar Tara J. Yosso’s (2006) acclaimed research on community cultural wealth (CCW) as a critical race theory (CRT), this talk will discuss the powerful benefits of infusing a critical perspective to teaching and learning. Empowering students to leverage the various forms of capital (i.e., aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital, Yosso, 2006) that emerges from their lived experiences, shifts agency back to the learner. Both educators and learners benefit from this critical approach, facilitating a more impactful and growth-centric learning experience for all.
Friday, October 27th, 2023
10 – 11:15 am ET in Ernie Pyle 206 & Zoom
The Price One Pays for Being in This (STEM) Environment (online and in-person)
Speaker: Dr. Patrick D. Smith
Many faculty and administrators are unaware of persistence strategies that many African American students must resort to as they pursue their STEM credentials. While the barriers that hinder STEM success for African Americans are prevalent in the literature, there is little data that exposes the unique qualities that propel them through circumstances of racial isolation, anxiety, and fear encountered in the STEM classroom.
This workshop will share the findings of the research of Dr. Patrick D. Smith who examined the experiences of African American college junior and senior STEM majors at three historically white institutions. He will share students’ stories of how they overcame challenges to their academic ability, intellectual worthiness, and their STEM identities. STEM faculty and staff will learn strategies they can employ inside and outside of the classroom that will position them to become a greater vehicle of support for African Americans in the STEM disciplines.
Dr. Patrick Smith is the Executive Director, Mentoring Services and Leadership Development in the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at IU Bloomington. He has worked at IU for 17 years as executive director. He received his doctorate in Higher Ed. Leadership from Indiana State University. Dr. Smith’s dissertation utilized an anti-deficit approach to explore persistence and achievement efforts of African American undergraduate STEM majors.
Friday,
October 20th, 2023
Authors Visit University of Michigan: 90-Minute Workshop
Kelly A. Hogan and Viji Sathy, the authors of Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom, will visit the University of Michigan on 10/20/23 to discuss their book and lead a workshop.
“Teaching strategies that emphasize structured active learning can create more equitable classrooms and improve learning for all students. As an introduction to inclusive teaching techniques, Professors Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy of the University of North Carolina will ask participants to reflect on inequities and diversity in their classrooms through interactive, hands-on activities. After providing a framework for inclusive design and their own research results, Hogan and Sathy will lead participants through active learning exercises and case studies that explore inclusive techniques. Drawing upon their own teaching experiences and educational research, they will model approaches that can be readily implemented with any discipline or class size to help all students achieve to their potentials.”
Thursday
June 1st, 2023
12 pm ET
What am I actually measuring? The role of validity evidence in STEM education research
Speaker: Regis Komperda, PhD, San Diego State University
Thursday
May 11th, 2023
12 pm ET
Examining the U.S. premed path as an example of discriminatory design
Speaker: Barret Michalec, PhD, Arizona State University
Thursday
April 13th, 2023
12 pm ET
Webs of Science: Mentor Networks Influence Social Integration into STEM Careers
Speaker: Paul Hernandez, PhD, Texas A&M University
Thurs. & Friday
March 30 & 31, 2023
12 pm ET
Waypoints Symposium
Hello from the University of California, Irvine!
You are invited to join us at our inaugural Waypoints Symposium where we will discuss the future of educational institutions in facilitating student success.
Our goal is to bring innovators together to discuss the different ways we must transform our institutions to better serve our students and our broader communities.
UCI is on an incredible journey to dismantle silos and disrupt the status quo for good. As we work toward improving student outcomes, graduation rates, and other traditional metrics, we find our path is best guided by a balance of policy, practice, and the strategic use of data.
We’d love to share our insights with you. But more importantly, we also want to hear your stories and together address the challenge before us. We encourage you to join the conversation.
Registration is now open, so reserve your seat today!
Thursday
March 9th, 2023
12 pm ET
Disrupting Paradigms and Practices to Diversify the Biology Education Ecosystem
Speaker: Angela Michelle White, PhD, Johnson C. Smith University
Thursday
February 2nd, 2023
12 pm ET
QuantCrit as a Methodological Framework to Support Equity and Justice in Chemistry Education Research
Speaker: Paulette Vincent-Ruz, NM State University
The myth of meritocracy obscures the reality of injustice manifesting as educational debts along gender, racial, and other marginalized identities. Particularly, in Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER), the study of equity and justice problems centers theoretical and methodological practices that perpetuate the racism-race reification process and fails to provide insight that can dismantle an unjust system. In this talk, I will present (1) the “Resources for Equitable Activation of Chemical Thinking Framework”, a framework I proposed to center equity theories in Chemistry Education Research, and (2) my QuantCrit methodological approach. I will apply this equity-centered approach to unearth a counterstory to traditional and harmful explanations of the “underperformance” of Black students in an Introductory Chemistry course. Furthermore, I will show how this equity- centered approach allows us to reach conclusions with practical implications that improve instructors’ practice, and better support their marginalized students. Finally, I will present how both my theoretical and methodological perspectives will be applied to build an Equity-Centered Research Program that aims to solve both theoretical and practical issues in Chemistry Education Research.
Monday
January 30th, 2023
A trans-Atlantic quest for evidence-based assessment
Speaker: Sehoya Cotner, University of Minnesota
Undergraduate introductory courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) often rely on a few, high-stakes exams to assess student learning. This assessment strategy engenders high test anxiety and negatively impacts performance, especially among students with marginalized identities (e.g., women, PEER, and first-generation college students). In US-based studies, we consistently find that more test anxious students perform worse in their STEM courses, and students with marginalized identities (in STEM) are more test anxious. In my recent work in Norway, I have found that all students overwhelmingly want more assessments, both graded and ungraded. Further, first generation students, a student group rarely studied in Norway, were more likely to ask for different types of assessments to replace high-stakes exams. In sum, student preferences align with assessment practices known to reduce the impact of test anxiety. These results support calls for creating STEM environments in which student voices are listened to and valued and where assessment practices provide opportunities for growth and learning. Discussion will center on various evidence-based strategies to mitigate the impacts of test anxiety and further our collective mission of equitable STEM education.
Monday
December 12th, 2022
1 pm – 2 pm EST
AIM Research – Equity in Assessment for Large Undergraduate Courses
Speaker: Montserrat B. Valdivia Medinaceli, Graduate Research Assistant, Indiana University Bloomington
In this presentation, I aim to showcase the importance of using item bias detection methods to improve equity in assessment. Large undergraduate S.T.E.M. and Business courses use assessments as an indicator of progress and achievement, and assessments tend to be highly weighted in the course’s final grade. Therefore, the implications of the results of these assessments are highly impactful on students’ progress and perception of ability, particularly when students belong to minoritized groups. I will present the results of applying various differential item functioning statistics to compare more- and less-privileged groups in a course final exam at a Midwest four-year university. I hope the results of this analysis help initiate a conversation about fairness in assessment in large undergraduate courses.
Fall 2022 – Winter 2023
Across multiple weeks and institutions!
Weeks of SEISMIC
The Weeks of SEISMIC continue into the Fall and Winter at more of our institutions! In the Fall, SEISMIC will be visiting University of Minnesota, Indiana University, and Arizona State University. In the Winter, SEISMIC will be visiting University of Pittsburgh and University of California Davis. Read more about the Weeks of SEISMIC on our webpage!
Previous Events and Webpages
Check out our 2021-2022 Events page for previous events and information!
SEISMIC Conversations was an event series for SEISMIC Working Group members. The Speaker Events Bureau hosted three SEISMIC Conversations during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Over two days, SEISMIC shared a variety of classroom innovations and programs to support course transformations at a large scale.
Check out our 2021 Winter/Spring Events page for previous events and information!
Check out our Fall 2020 Events page for previous events and information!