Susan Keenan

Postdoctoral Fellow, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (formally University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey), 2006
Area of Study: Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

PhD, St. Louis University Medical School, 2001
Area of Study: Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences

BA, University of Missouri St Louis, 1997
Area of Study: Chemistry

Professor, University of Northern Colorado
(2015 – Present)

Associate Dean
(2022 – Present)

Director, STEM Inclusive Excellence Collective
(2019 – Present)

Improving Classroom Culture to Support Intrinsic Motivation as a Pathway to STEM Inclusive Excellence

In 2017 the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) awarded the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) one of 24 grants to improve the inclusivity of their undergraduate science, technology, and mathematics programs (HHMI, 2018). HHMI encourages the development of strategies to better support an increasingly diverse population and disseminates policies that the science, technology, mathematics, engineering (STEM) community can implement to better provide opportunities for success. UNC is using this five-year grant to develop and administer its Inclusive Excellence program (IE). One aspect of the IE project supports small cohorts of faculty (Inclusive Excellence Teacher-Scholars) in professional development to build their capacity to support an increasingly diverse student body. The Inclusive Excellence project aims to assist faculty in gaining awareness of their own implicit biases, beliefs, and values so that they may adjust classroom practices and monitor their communication with and responses to students. Faculty are also given strategies to meaningfully address explicit bias and microaggressions that they witness in the classroom or among fellow faculty. The project assessment team are gathering and analyzing survey, interview, faculty syllabi, faculty assignments, and student academic success data to understand 1) how IE teacher-scholars engage in equity-minded instructional practices, and 2) how IE teacher-scholars will increase awareness, knowledge, and disposition toward engaging in equity-minded practices.

Learning Assistant Program Impacts

The Learning Assistant (LA) Program at UNC began in Spring 2024. LAs are undergraduate peer instructors who facilitate student learning in a classroom. The course instructor meets with the LA(s) in the classroom, and LAs take a pedagogy course to consider pedagogical practices and how they apply to their practices. The course instructors also participate in a faculty learning community (FLC) during the semester. This research will address the following questions: What are the impacts of LAs on student content understanding and retention in a major? What are the impacts of LAs on student sense of belonging and science identity? How does the LA Program impact LA science identity? What are the student, instructor and LA expectations of the LA’s role? Are they aligned? Does this change over time? How are instructors, LAs, and students influenced by the level of alignment? How does the LA Program impact instructor classroom structures and practices?