The RISE Center welcomes visiting scholar Jamie Jensen for the month of February. Jamie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Brigham Young University. She specializes in the development and assessment of undergraduate biology curricula that employ evidenced-based pedagogical strategies to increase student scientific reasoning skills and deep conceptual understanding.

Bio: Joseph Gazing Wolf is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe with mixed race Black Seminole and Amazigh heritage. His life’s work is located at the interface of Indigenous lifeways and colonial cultures. His early journey from landless abject poverty and starvation revealed the vast indignities that Indigenous peoples have endured under colonial rule.

Bio: Dr. Dina Verdín is trained in the fields of Engineering Education and Industrial Engineering. She is a Mexican-American, Southern California native who was the first in her family to attend college (i.e., first-generation college student). Her research focused on access and persistence of Latinx and first-generation college students studying engineering comes from experiencing a lack of access to engineering identity shaping opportunities, experiencing the male-dominated culture of engineering, and struggle towards persisting in the field.

Bio: I am a queer, able-bodied (ish) person of the global majority. I enjoy reading, video games, and television, typically with a science fiction or fantasy theme. I also enjoy amateur nature photography and collage art projects. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and went to school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (University of Pittsburgh). I then completed two postdoctoral fellowships in Tennessee (Vanderbilt University and University of Memphis) before landing at Arizona State University. This is my favorite weather by far.

Bio: Darryl Reano is an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. Reano's research is focused on creating culturally relevant educational environments using Indigenous research frameworks. Before joining ASU, Reano was a postdoctoral associate in the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University. 

Bio: Amy is the Director of Learning Design for the College of Global Futures. Her passion is developing high quality inclusive courses that effectively implement emerging technologies for all students. She promotes collaborative course design with a partnership between faculty and instructional designers to advocate for evidence-based teaching practices and innovative technologies in all modalities, and a continual review process for improving courses.

Bio: Dr. Fabio Milner studies structured population models, including demography, epidemics, ecology, and tumor growth. Populations are usually structured by age (demographic and/or age-of-disease), and may also be structured by sex, size, or other relevant variables. The team studies theoretical properties of the models, such as existence, uniqueness, preservation of non-negativity, and asymptotic behavior, as well as real-life applications.