Education Speaker
Dr. Martin Storksdieck

Dr. Storksdieck is the Director of the Center for Research in Lifelong STEM Learning at Oregon State University.

Title: The link between college instruction and the quality of K-12 science and math education

The Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core Math Standards have been adopted by many states, and those who resist adoption are adjusting their state standards to adhere at least partially to the basic architecture of the NGSS and CCMS. Soon the first wave of high school students who learned under these standards will enter colleges, and with them they will bring a new culture of science and math learning that colleges need to adjust to. The focus on disciplinary practices and performance expectations in K-12 might also serve as a useful frame to improve college instruction itself. This is badly needed: future K-12 teachers tend to mimic in their own classrooms how they were taught their discipline, and not how they were told to teach in educational methods classes. Considerable responsibly for the quality of K-12 math and science teaching, therefore, lies with faculty in colleges and universities who are teaching introductory courses in the disciplines.

Biological Speaker
Dr. Karen Guillemin   

Title: Lessons learned from listening to host-microbe systems

Karen Guillemin is a faculty member of in the Department of Biology and the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon, where she directs a research group studying host-microbe systems. Her group uses model organisms, including the zebrafish, to study how animals coexist with their resident microbial communities in both health and disease. She directs the Microbial Ecology and Theory of Animals (META) Center for Systems Biology, an NIH National Center for Systems Biology. The META Center innovates experimental and theoretical approaches to understand how host-microbe systems biology and new approaches to teaching quantitative biology and computation through microbiology.

Eugene Natural History Society sponsored speaker

Dr. Rebecca Vega-Thurber

Rebecca Vega-Thurber is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Oregon State University. Her lab investigates how bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms interact with and regulate tropical reef and deep-sea ecosystems.

Talk: Coral reef decline

In her talk to us, Dr. Thurber will relate some of her lab’s recent work on the problem of coral bleaching and the effects of marine viruses. Besides seeing what sick coral looks like, we will be treated to scenes of incredible beauty, both above and below the surfaces of several of the world’s oceans.