News

Welcome to UBC EOAS!

Over the past week we have welcomed around 45 new graduate students to our department, bringing our total grad cohort to a massive 178 students! (84 Canadian and 94 International).

On our Graduate Student Orientation Day last Wednesday, current graduate students and faculty members had the chance to meet and chat to the new students at a lunch in the atrium (shown).

We are looking forward to getting to know you all better, and excited to have you as the newest members of our Department!

Talk Matters: Investigating the Nature of Non-Content Classroom Language - Instructor Talk - that May Mediate Student Inclusion, Engagement, and Learning

When: Tuesday, September 27, 12:30pm–2:00pm

Where: Online via Zoom (Please pre-register here: https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Ypdu-ppz4uGdwuTPEDIWuSwklc_YSnj2CP)

Abstract: Through the language they use, instructors create classroom environments that have the potential to impact learning by affecting student motivation, resistance, belonging, and self-efficacy. However, despite the critical importance of instructor language to the student experience, little research has investigated what instructors are saying in undergraduate classrooms. We systematically investigated instructor language that was not directly related to content and defined this as Instructor Talk. We identified five robust categories of Instructor Talk that can characterize ~90% of non-content language found in over 60 courses: 1) Building Instructor/Student Relationships, 2) Establishing Classroom Culture, 3) Explaining Pedagogical Choices, 4) Sharing Personal Experience, and 5) Unmasking Science. The remaining ~10% of instances of Instructor Talk in these settings were categorized as negatively phrased or potentially discouraging in nature. Attention to Instructor Talk in undergraduate classrooms may be key for instructors to create inclusive learning environments and promote student learning.

About the Presenter: Dr. Kimberly Tanner is a rotating Program Officer in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) at the National Science Foundation, on leave from her position as a tenured Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University. Her laboratory – SEPAL: the Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory – investigates what is challenging to learn in biology, how biologists choose to teach, and how to make equity, diversity, and inclusion central in science education efforts. As a Science Faculty with an Education Specialty (SFES), she is engaged in discipline-based education research, directs multiple K-16+ biology education reform efforts, and is deeply engaged in faculty professional development. She is a founding editorial board member and current Co-Editor-in-Chief of the leading journal in her field, CBE–Life Sciences Education (LSE). Trained as a neurobiologist with postdoctoral studies in science education, Dr. Tanner is a proud first-generation college-going student, accustomed to she/her pronouns, and proud mom of a jazz/rock drummer and an aspiring robotics engineer, both produced in partnership with her college sweetheart and biochemistry lab partner.

Note: We will also be hosting two 1-hour small group discussions with Kimberly Tanner that morning. If you are interested in attending one of these small group discussions, you can indicate this in the pre-registration and we will follow up with you.

For more details, please visit the Speaker Series: Teaching & Learning in Science through the lens of Indigeneity, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion 

“With the interdisciplinary nature of the courses—combining students from different degree backgrounds and years and community partners from outside the university—students will work together to put what they learn into action.” – UBC Science

EOAS has been committed to and playing an active role in bringing our research, teaching, operations and public outreach in solidarity with the UBC Declaration on the Climate Emergency. As part of the great team of faculty and staff from UBC Science and Arts, we are pleased to offer the now approved Certificate in Climate Studies and Action, and a series of Climate Action Labs (ENVR 201-402) that address pressing climate issues, which are open for registration to all students across UBC.

“The students will go through a series of workshops at the beginning of the class to prepare them for the work that they’ll be doing,” says Dr. Tara Ivanochko (EOAS Associate Professor of Teaching; academic director of UBC’s Sustainability Hub). “In the second half of the class, they’ll develop proposals to address the challenge that a community partner has given them. Some of the proposals will be selected to move on to the climate capstone course that follows.”

Read the full UBC Science article: New courses at UBC tackle real world problems
Learn more about the Certificate in Climate Studies and Action
Do you know we have a place on the EOAS website dedicated to Climate Crisis, including our actions, research, climate-related courses, undergraduate projects, etc? Visit here: Climate Crisis

EOAS faculty Kirsten Hodge, Shandin Pete, Laura Lukes together with David Anderson in the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education have teamed up to build a brand new graduate course in EOAS that will focus on science outreach and communication through the lens of informal learning spaces such as science centers and museums. The project is called SCI-LEnS or Student-Curated Informal Learning & Engagement Spaces and was funded through UBC's Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund. Hodge and her colleagues are working closely with student co-developers — Ruth Moore (EOAS Graduate Student), Raveen Sidhu and Oli Beeby (UBC 4th Undergraduate Students) — to construct the course landscape, which covers the fundamentals of science communication from understanding your audience to the art of rhetoric in science communication, a deep dive into the principles and practices for communicating science in museums, both self-directed and guided learning environments, as well as the use of digital and tradition media in communicating science stories.

The SCI-LEnS team brings together local museum experts from the Museum of Anthropology, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Science World, and the Pacific Museum of Earth to collaborate on developing the course content. In mid-June, the project team met at UBC to refine the course goals and draft learning objectives for each of the course modules, further refining the course scope. This fall the project team plans to visit local museums to explore the course modules through specific exhibits and programs offered at each location.

The course, which will be co-taught by Hodge and Lukes will be offered for the first time in January 2024. Students who enroll in the course will be immersed in the art of communicating science as they reimagine their delivery of complex, cutting-edge scientific phenomena not only to public audiences but also to students (K-12 and Tertiary), their future colleagues, and the broader scientific community. The course will provide experiential learning opportunities for students through the creation/curation of physical and virtual exhibitions in the Pacific Museum of Earth, Science World, Museum of Anthropology and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Hodge and Lukes plan to take an inquiry-based approach in which students will examine, investigate, design, peer-review and experiment with multiple approaches for mediating science stories in different settings.

One of the main outcomes of this project is to shift the Pacific Museum of Earth into a self-sustaining teaching/learning/outreach ecosystem in which the exhibit renewal and upgrades are inspired through the final course projects. Students will be tasked with designing an exhibit or public program that will then inspire upgrades to the museum’s exhibit space or public programming menu. This will ensure that the museum is presenting the most up-to-date science happening in EOAS and, over time, will transition the Pacific Museum of Earth into UBC’s first and only fully-student-curated museum.

Marghaleray Amini received a Master’s degree from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany (2003), and a PhD from Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany (2007), where she studied the chemical and isotopic compositions of marine hydrothermal systems. During her postdoctoral positions in the Saskatchewan Isotope Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan, and in Mainz within the DFG-funded Geocycles program, she worked on the application of metal stable isotope systems in biogeochemical cycles. Dr. Amini has worked aboard research cruises and in field sites in remote areas such as the North Pole and the Band-e-Amir lakes in Afghanistan. She joined Kabul University as a Scientific Advisor and lecturer as part of the German Foreign Aid development program. In 2012, she joined PCIGR as a Research Associate, where she oversaw the operation of the nUBC research facility, and is in direct charge of the laser ablation ICP-MS. Her research interests include developing new methodological approaches to trace biogeochemical reaction pathways across interphases.

Rhiana Elizabeth Henry is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia, department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, within the Mineralogical Research Group led by Dr. Lee Groat. Her specialty is gemstone mineralogy. Her Ph.D research is on the crystal-chemistry of beryl. She uses single-crystal X-ray diffraction and chemical analyses to study the H2O content within the crystal structure of beryl, related to Na content, chemical differences between beryl varieties, and to create a predictive model of how the beryl structure changes with varied chemistry. This work can be used to help inform geological and gemological studies on beryl, find unique subtypes, and the modeling method can be extended to other minerals in the future. Rhiana completed her M.Sc. in Geologic Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2018 studying the crystallography of a Be-Fe-REE mineral gadolinite. She completed her Graduate Gemologist certification in 2018 at the Gemological Institute of America. She completed her two B.A. degrees in Physics and Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2013. She has been a teaching assistant for three different physics courses and four different geology courses. She is the mineral name checker for the journal Canadian Mineralogist, ensuring mineral names are properly described before publication. She is passionate about using gemstone mineralogy as a gateway for new students into geological science.