VERSA News and Publications
Manvir Bamrah and Libby Kotei-Fearon present VERSA research at SABER West!
January 2025
The research that 2024 VERSA alumni Manvir Bamrah performed with his mentor Dr. Claire Meaders and Libby Kotei-Fearon and Kat Lauinger did with mentor Dr. Stanley Lo was presented at the SABER West conference.
Manvir gave a Plenary Short Talk on "Characterizing Undergraduate Biology Discussion Sections in Support of Student Learning and Experience." This project examines how differences in how discussion sections are run can influence what students do in them and how they feel about their learning experiences.
Libby presented a poster on the work she and Kat performed together on "Examining Instructor Growth in Adaptive Equity-Oriented Pedagogical Competency: Implications for STEM Higher Education Professional Development." This project is about how college instructors learn how to teach in a more responsive way to students.
Congrats to Manvir, Libby, Kat, Claire, and Stanley!
Alfonso Godínez Aguilar publishes VERSA research in JMBE and CBE Life Sciences Education!
December 2024
The research that 2023 VERSA alumnus Alfonso Godínez Aguilar conducted during the VERSA program with his mentors Dr. Melinda T. Owens and Dr. Claire Meaders has been published in two journals, the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education Research and CBE Life Sciences Education. This research shows how an intervention that teaches the chemistry of life to introductory biology students affects their learning and feelings about chemistry, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Congrats to Alfonso, Melinda, and Claire!
Claire L. Meaders, Lilyan Mendez, Alfonso Godínez Aguilar, Angelita T. Rivera, Izabella Vasquez, Liam O. Mueller, and Melinda T. Owens. 2025. An Asynchronous Chemistry-in-biology Intervention Improves Student Content Knowledge and Performance in Introductory Biology. CBE Life Sciences Education. Mar; 24(1):ar2. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.24-05-0151
Lilyan Mendez, Angelita T. Rivera, Izabella Vasquez, Alfonso Godínez Aguilar, Melinda T. Owens, Claire L. Meaders. How Students Taking Introductory Biology Experience the Chemistry Content. Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education. 0:e00111-24. https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00111-24
UCSD welcomes 12 VERSA Scholars for 2024
June 2024
UCSD welcomes 12 new VERSA scholars, its biggest VERSA cohort ever, to UCSD for Summer 2024.
These VERSA scholars, who come from 11 different colleges and university from all over the country, are coming to UCSD to do mentorship STEM education research. Each of them is working with one of 11 different UCSD faculty mentors in fields ranging from Biology to Astrophysics to Electrical Engineering to Psychology. This is the largest VERSA cohort ever, and we have updated the program in various ways to support their growth and success. Welcome new VERSA scholars!
Joana Fang publishes VERSA research at SIGCSE!
March 2024
The research that 2023 VERSA alumna Joana Fang conducted during the VERSA program with her mentor Dr. Mia Minnes has been published in the Proceedings of the SIGCSE symposium on computer science education. This research analyzes the effectiveness of an intervention that helps incoming computer science students feel welcomed in their field. Congrats to Joana and Mia!
Joana writes: "Thank you again for all that VERSA has provided me. It has immensely increased my sense of belonging in research. I never would have imagined that I would be a co-author in research published for a conference."
Niharika Bhaskar, Amari N. Lewis, Rona Darabi, Joana Fang, Jingting Liu, Kristen Vaccaro, Joe Gibbs Politz, and Mia Minnes. 2024. Welcoming Students to Undergraduate Computer Science Programs: On-ramps, Rest Areas, and Lane Changes. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 109–115. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630964
