Each year, IE@OSU welcomes a cohort of up to 20 STEM faculty from OSU, Linn-Benton, and Lane Community Colleges to participate in a year-long fellowship. Fellows complete a weeklong Academy, an action plan, and participate in the professional learning community.
Inclusive Excellence Current Fellows
2022-2023 Fellows
Jie Zhang
Primary Title: Instructor/Senior Research Associate 1
Institution: Oregon State University
College: Science, Mathematics and Engineering
Department: Chemistry
Establishing Connections with Students via Activities
Science should not be intimidating for any STEM major students! Many first-year students came to the class with anxiety because they heard general chemistry is very challenging and shy about asking for help when they are struggling. My action plan is to establish connections with general chemistry CH121 students via several activities so they feel safe, welcome, and supported in their first-year study by increasing the participation rate of lecture attendance, Q&A time, and communication with students. Activities include “introduce yourself” in the first two weeks to invite the students to stop by my office to chat about their background and goal for the term; a Canvas activity with extra points of “Scientists and me” discussion thread to let the students write a short essay about one scientist they feel resonance with, or they share a similar background and how they can be inspired by the scientists; I also provide water bottle stickers/ chemistry badges as inside and outside lecture award for asking questions or attending lectures.
Rachael Cate
Primary Title: Instructor
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: EECS/College of Engineering
Communities of Practice: Lifting Voices for Consciousness & Cultural Change Archive
We must transform our programs and industry culture to be more inclusive of historically marginalized students. We can support them by empowering them to organize and lift their voices. My aims are 1) increased marginalized students’ sense of belonging and progress toward transformative learning according to Mezirow’s framework and 2)Empower marginalized students to impact values and culture in the engineering industry and discipline. This project creates opportunities for students to participate in meaningful and transformative community relationships together where they can both be leaders, capitalizing on their social capital, and they can also find others who they relate to that can support their development. It also creates a spaces where students can use their own agency to narrate auto-ethnographic accounts of their own experiences in the School of EECS and build an archive repository through the OSU Storycorps Archive project and produces an auto-ethnographic journal article where these narratives can be shared and make an impact.
Devlin Montfort
Primary Title: Associate Professor
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering
Email Review
I'm going to work with Wendy Aaron (IEF) to review my end-of-term emails to students to look for consistency and fairness, opportunities to improve inclusivity and to check the alignment between my explicit values and my day-to-day practices.
Wendy Rose Aaron
Primary Title: Instructor
Institution: Lane Community College
Department: Math and Engineering
Equity-minded Email
In this action plan we explore equity-minded email. We consider the recommendations for an "equity-minded" syllabus and extend these to email communications with students. We share email communications with students and responses to these emails from students.
Elizabeth Swanson
Primary Title: Instructor
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: Forest Ecosystems and Society
Building Connections and Inclusive Environments for Native American Students at OSU
Recruitment and retention of Native American students at Oregon State University has been an enduring challenge for decades due to several factors, including but not limited to, marginalization, institutional racism and cultural insensitivity. While efforts are in place to rectify this history, obstacles remain. According to institutional analytics, OSU’s first year retention rate for Native American students has steeply declined and is at its lowest historical rate of 50%, with only 12 students entering the university in the year 2021. Graduation rates are similarly problematic hovering around an average 48%. The goal of this project is to increase recruitment and retention of Native American students by creating a greater sense of belonging and inclusion at OSU. This initiative is unique because it will empower Native American students through an internship opportunity to use their voices, lived experiences and cultural lens to identify and establish guidelines that will increase their sense of belonging and inclusion in campus life, and build connections among their peers. This program will provide the framework, logistical and administrative support, and assessment tools to ensure its success and the success of its participants.
Samantha McGee
Primary Title: Senior Instructor 1
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: Mathematics
Cultivating a DEI Learning Community for LAs
This project sought to foster a sense of community among College of Science Learning Assistants and provide them with an effective environment in which they could safely engage with professional development opportunities centered around matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In turn, it was intended that LAs experience an increase in their own sense of belongingness and support, and that they implement their gains from the DEI-centered workshops to provide more holistic support to the large and diverse student population that they support in many undergraduate classrooms at OSU.
Rebecka Tumblin
Primary Title: Instructor
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: Physics
Promoting the Persistence of Women in Physics Through Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP)
Women are surprisingly underrepresented in the field of physics. In 2022, barely 20% of all physics bachelor’s degrees were awarded to women. The physics community has a history that predominately included only white males, and unfortunately this is still the norm. In 2000, the STEPUP report from the American Physical Society (APS) laid the groundwork for institutional change promoting the inclusion of women in high-school physics. STEPUP is a national movement which draws from research evidence to provide physics teachers with resources to reduce barriers and inspire young women to major in physics. It turns out women do not feel comfortable when everyone around them, especially professors, are white and male. In an effort to promote the persistence of women in physics at the college level, Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) began as a grassroots effort in 2006 at UC Southern and was later adopted in 2012 by APS. CUWiP was founded with the goal of increasing the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to women by providing undergraduate women in physics the opportunity to experience a professional conference, attend plenary sessions and workshops, learn information on graduate schools and professions in physics, and gain access to a community of women in physics. My action plan for the Inclusive Excellence program involves taking on the role of liaison and chaperone for CUWiP here at OSU. In 2023, I took 12 of our undergraduate physics majors to Seattle to experience CUWiP. In addition, I led the OSU physics department in joining the Pacific Northwest CUWiP Consortium in 2022. As part of the consortium, OSU physics agreed to hold a conference here in 2026. In this effort I will pull heavily from the body of students here at OSU to help me organize the conference. As a small step toward assessment of the outcome of this action plan, I developed a survey to measure student self-efficacy and sense of belonging before and after attendance of the conference. However, more assessments will follow when we officially hold a CUWiP here at OSU in 2026.
Cassandra Siler
Primary Title: Senior Instructor 1
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: Chemistry
Student Participation in Organic Chemistry
My action plan is intended to get students to (1) feel as though they belong in Organic Chemistry and (2) participate more actively so that they can succeed. This is centered around making lectures feel accessible and active participation during class, which will hopefully also increase participation in recitation and homework activities. I will try to increase student's participation during class by using Poll Everywhere, calling on students, and having students make name-tags. I will also attend an active teaching in Organic Chemistry Workshop held in June at North Dakota State University. I will assess my plan by taking student surveys both this year and next year, after implementing more strategies that I will learn about during my summer workshop.
Sulochana Kumari Wasala
Primary Title: Instructor
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: Integrative Biology
Towards Growth Mindset: Fostering Self-confidence and Sense of Belonging in an Online Classroom
In addition to the absence of physical presence and asynchronous nature in online courses, students' lack of confidence in their abilities, affect their sense of belonging in the class room. In advanced science classes, anxiety and self-doubt about the learning material are evident among students, which negatively affects students’ sense of belonging and subsequent learning achievements. This perceived competence; the belief that one has limited skills in a particular subject area demonstrates a "fixed mindset". For instance, a student displaying a fixed mindset would say, “I'm just bad at math, and I don't feel like I belong in this class”. The opposite of this mindset is the "growth mindset", the understanding that we can develop/improve our abilities and intelligence. A student displaying a growing mindset would say, “I can improve my math skills through practice and as I learn more, I appreciate being in this class”. My goal is to reduce anxiety and self-doubt many students experience in advanced genetics by implementing “growth mindset” framework and foster self-confidence/belonging to maximize learning for all students.
Amila Udayanga Liyanage
Primary Title: Senior Instructor 1
Institution: Oregon State University
Department: Chemistry
Maneuvering Classroom Climate for Inclusivity and Student Success
Classroom climate refers to the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical environments in which our students learn. This includes students’ perceptions of their interactions with the instructor and their peers, the rigor of the course content, and their involvement in the class. These perceptions greatly contribute to their sense of belonging in the classroom. A positive classroom climate is essential for creating a safe, inclusive, and supportive learning environment, which then leads to a significant impact on student learning outcomes. My Inclusive Excellence action plan involves creating a positive classroom climate to increase the sense of belonging among students in chemistry lecture and laboratory courses. Specifically, I aim to improve instructor-student & student-student interactions, facilitate flexible student-content interactions and thereby help students achieve their academic goals.
Linnea Vose
Primary Title: Instructor
Institution: Lane Community College
Department: Science/Anatomy and Physiology
Increasing Belonging to Improve Perserverence
By increasing a feeling of student belonging, I hope to improve perseverance for pre-healthcare students during the challenging course series of anatomy and physiology (A&P). This series has a high attrition rate, especially for students who do not quickly form effective study groups and/or feel supported by their professor. I implemented multiple methods known to improve belonging during A&P1 and its prerequisite - including using a warm syllabus, offering "by appointment" office hours, and encouraging student-student interactions via ice breakers and frequent class discussions. Belonging, perseverance, and involvement in study groups were measured using a survey at the beginning and end of the term.