Congratulations to group members Lauren, Dalton, Leah, and Kevin for being recognized at the Department of Chemistry Annual Awards Ceremony!  Lauren was recognized for earning the Kenneth Sando Undergraduate Scholarship and the Senior Chemistry Alumni Award! Dalton was recognized for earning the Departmental American Institute of Chemists Award! And Leah and Kevin were recognized for earning the Graduate College Summer Research Fellowship. We are so proud of their accomplishments!

Congratulations to Lauren who was awarded the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates Research Fellowship for this summer! She will be continuing her work on student's reasoning about organic chemistry reactions. ​

Congrats to Kevin and Leah for being selected for the Graduate College Summer Fellowship! We are excited to see their dissertations come together.

Congratulations to Lauren and Dalton who presented posters at the UI Spring Undergraduate Research Festival! Lauren is working with Kevin on her project titled: "A qualitative analysis of undergraduate students' explanations for organic chemistry mechanisms. Dalton is working with Leah on his project titled: "Phenomena-Based Learning in college chemistry: doing to understand vs. doing to do."  We are so proud of them!

New paper from Vanessa, Leah, Cara, Nicole, and Ryan!

The group got together for a lovely lunch to celebrate the end of the semester and to recognize ALL of the great work we've accomplished!

We are thrilled to have Stephanie in our group this semester! Stephanie Erps is joining us from the Science Education program in the Teaching and Learning Department. She is in her second year of the Science Education PhD program. She found her love of Chemistry at Wartburg College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry in 2013. Stephanie joins us with eight years of teaching a variety of secondary science courses in North Carolina, California, and in Anamosa IA. Steph loves adventures with her husband and six-year-old, Wyatt, and enjoys reading crime novels in her free time. 

What we emphasize and reward on assessments signals to students what matters to us. Accordingly, a great deal of scholarship in chemistry education has focused on defining the sorts of performances worth assessing. Here, we unpack observations we made while analyzing what “success” meant across three large-enrollment general chemistry environments.

Dalton Rippey and Lauren Groenenboom are our newest Undergraduate Researchers

The group was finally able to gather in person again (all fully vaccinated) and we enjoyed lunch and lawn games. It has been over a year and a half since we were all together!