Katey is the PI of the Cooper Biology Education Research Lab at ASU. Her research group examines how to make biology learning environments more inclusive for students with anxiety and depression. In addition, Katey leads RISE research projects focused on creating more inclusive academic biology environments for LGBTQ+ individuals and individuals with disabilities. Katey is also a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
Trained as a PhD neuroscientist, Sara transitioned to become a discipline-based education researcher and conducts research on how we can make undergraduate biology learning environments more inclusive, specifically focusing on women, LGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities, transfer students, and religious students.
This NSF IUSE project is designed to explore bias in instructor exams in introductory biology. This collaborative project will analyze questions on introductory biology course exams taught by different instructors, specifically examining the relationships between different types of questions, student scores on the questions, and student understanding of the concept that the question is supposed to test. This information has the potential to help biology instructors more fairly and accurately test student understanding of biology.
The goal of this NSF RCN-UBE network incubator grant is to bring together experts in evolutionary biology, education education, educational psychology, and psychometrics to consider current instruments to measure student acceptance of evolution and identify ways in which we can improve these measures.