Bulletin Board

Dina Newman published 3 articles in the August 2025 issue of the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. Two were with Kate Wright and Crystal Uminski on the topic of visual literacy, while the third was with external collaborators on the topic of instructional reform in biology.

All 4 postdocs from the CASTLE postdoc program have started faculty positions! Christian Cammarota is now a Lecturer at Yale University, Mike Foster is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State, Alia Hamdan is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Crystal Uminski is an Assistant Professor at Towson University!

Ben Zwickl, collaborating with researchers at Fisk University (Qingxia Li, Ololade Adetula) and John Hopkins University (Ebony McGee), published "Impacts of an Industrial Partnership with a Historically Black University on the Computing Career Decisions of Black Undergraduate Students" in ACM Transactions on Computing Education. The work built from an NSF BCSER project (PI: Qingxia Li) for which Zwickl was an advisor.

Dr. Sachmpazidi has published an article along with the Physics Education Research group at the Ohio State University led by Dr. Cochran in Physical Review - Physics Education Research titled "Understanding familial capital and its implications for physics graduate programs"

Postdoc Andi Piña and Professor Ben Zwickl were on the organizing committee for the 2025 Physics Education Research Conference in Washington, D.C.

Diana Sachmpazidi and Mike Verostek gave talks at AAPT in DC: “Beneath the Surface: Documenting Culture to Drive Change in Physics Graduate Programs” and “Improving the Experiences of Physics PhD Students by Supporting their Search for a Research Group.”

Postdocs Christian Cammarota, Mike Foster, and Mike Verostek, guided by PIs Tony Wong and Ben Zwickl published an article titled "Social Computational Literacy in Practice: A Framework Describing STEM Researchers' Communication" in the Journal for STEM Education Research.

Professor Ben Zwickl and Dina Zohrabi Alaee (Coastal Carolina University) published "Exploring subfield interest development in undergraduate physics students through social cognitive career theory" in Physical Review Physics Education Research.

Kate Wright and Dina Newman gave talks at SABER in Minneapolis: “Deceptively simple: Advanced biology students misunderstand foundational concepts of genetic inheritance represented in Punnett squares” and “Student Drawings Reveal Visual Literacy Gaps in DNA Representation.”

Crystal Uminski gave a talk at SABER in Minneapolis:  “Biology exams rarely use visual models to engage higher-order cognitive skills.”

Scott Franklin co-organized and led the 2025 Professional-development for Emerging Education Researchers Field School. Twenty-six faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students from around the country came to RIT to learn education research theory and methodologies and apply them to their individual research projects.

Christian Cammarota presented a poster at SABER in Minneapolis: “Student engagement with a computational activity evidences biological and computational sensemaking.”

Crystal Uminski attended the Science Communication Education Research Network (SCERN) inaugural meeting and presented a poster, “Y-shaped chromosomes, heterozygous chromatids, and mis-sized genes: Easy edits can clarify the misconceptions commonly found in published scientific figures.”

Crystal Uminski, Kate Wright, and Dina Newman published “Biology exams rarely use visual models to engage higher-order cognitive skills” in PLOS One.

Christian Cammarota gave a talk at the Open Science in Undergraduate Education Symposium hosted by the Allen Institute in Seattle, Washington.

Dina Newman presented a poster at The Grading Conference, a virtual meeting about alternative grading practices that are focused on equity and authentic learning. “Feedback-First Grading: A modified standards approach to put the focus back on grades and improve learning.”