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Who We Are

The Center for Advancing Scholarship to Transform Learning is a network of faculty, projects and programs engaged in scholarship surrounding STEM education.

Led by co-directors Dina Newman and Ben Zwickl, CASTLE is comprised of STEM faculty, research associates, instructional service professionals, and communication experts. Together they form a network of skilled individuals committed to the Center’s mission of advancing STEM teaching, learning and evaluation. Members work together on research and programs engaged in scholarship of pedagogy, facilitating dialog, encouraging collaborative opportunities in evidence-based practices, conducting discipline-based education research and establishing methods of assessment and evaluation.

Research

Dina Newman and Leslie Kate Wright standing with 6 students.

Research Groups

Several faculty members gathered around a table, having a discussion.

Journal Club

A large group of people sitting in a lecture hall for a presentation.

Seminar Speaker Series

A group of students posing for a photo with Dina Newman and Leslie Kate Wright.

Research Experience for Undergraduates

News

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Bulletin Board

CASTLE Director Dina Newman publishes 3 articles in 1 issue of JMBE

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.

4 CASTLE Postdocs start faculty positions

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!

Zwickl and collaborators publish on impacts of Google program at HBCU

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 and OSU PER group, led by Dr. Cochran, on familial capital for physics graduate students

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"