Frey Group News
April 2024 – Congratulations to Jocelyn Tucker and Josie Valerius on their oral presentation titled "A qualitative study exploring students opened ended responses regarding belonging uncertainty in general chemistry ", and to Bricia Hendry and Kass Johnson on their poster titled "How Comfortability with Professor Affects Students’ Perception of Belonging." They all gave terrific presentations! And, as a special treat, Dasha Walker (former undergraduate researcher in the group and current dental student) came by to see the presentations.
October 2022 – Lorraine Laguerre Van Sickle attends SACNAS (The Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science) in Puerto Rico. She gave a talk on study habits and talked with undergraduates about graduate school (and chemical education research) in the US. Great job, Lori!
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July 2022 - Group hike!
July 2022 - Celebratory lunch for Josh Edwards!
May 2022 - Congratulations to Josh Edwards!!
Spring 2022 - A College of Science (COS) program that gives first-year students the opportunity to participate in scientific research during their first year. As a cohort, these students take a research class their first semester that prepares them to work in a research lab, and in the spring they join an SRI research group (known as an SRI Stream).
This spring, 3 students joined the Frey SRI Stream, where they conducted qualitative research on general chemistry student responses to open-ended questions describing their reasons for selecting their level of social belonging in General Chemistry. Specifically, these SRI students started developing a code book for student responses to the question “I feel uncertain about my belonging in CHEM 1210 (i.e., sometimes I feel that I belong and sometimes I don’t).”
The students are (left to right in the photo): Salma Djalal, Sophie Humphreys (on zoom) and Maria Munoz.
April 2022 - Dasha Walker receives the Diana Campbell Memorial Staff Excellence Award!
April 2022 - Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE) at Washington University in St. Louis and the Frey group at the University of Utah are co-hosting the 2022 CIRCLE National Conference “Integrating Psychology and STEM Education Research to Promote Innovative Teaching” on April 4-5, 2022. The conference is being supported by the Association of American Universities (AAU) of which both the University of Utah and Washington University in St. Louis are members.
Find more info: circle.wustl.edu/events/2022-circle-conference/
February 2022 - weekly group meeting
December 2021 - Dasha Walker accepts an admission offer from the University of Utah School of Dentistry to start in Fall 2022!
October 2021 - Prof. Gina Frey visits Washington University in St. Louis and meets with our REU student - Mark Jareczek
September 2021 - Josh Edwards publishes his first first-author paper in a special issue in Journal of Chemical Education about “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Respect in Chemistry Education Research and Practice”. Josh's paper is titled “Relationship between Course-Level Social Belonging (Sense of Belonging and Belonging Uncertainty) and Academic Performance in General Chemistry 1” and is co-authored by Ramón Barthelemy and Gina Frey. Congratulations, Josh!!
The University of Utah's news source @theU published an article about Josh's work - https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/belonging-uncertainty-stem/
August 2021 - Josh Edwards presents at the 2021 ACS meeting in Atlanta, Georgia
August 2021 - REU student Mark is giving his Summer REU poster presentation
August 2021 - Dasha Walker graduates with her Bachelor Degree!
July 2021 - the group goes on the Circle-All Peak hike. 1,541 ft elevation gain!
July 2021 - Prof. Gina Frey went to visit Eileen Ragsdale to update her on what our group is doing and what the department is doing in continuing outreach to high-school students and teachers. They had a wonderful visit together and will be meeting again in the Fall.
Eileen (and her husband who passed away in 2020) is the supporter of Gina's named professorship (Ron and Eileen Ragsdale Endowed Chair in Chemical Education). She is extremely interested in teaching (both university and high school) and chemical education research. Because of her support, the department has started this area of research.
June 2021 - REU student Mark is participating in the annual Chemistry department table tennis tournament
June 2021 - Frey group is part of the national Inclusive STEM Teaching Project
A national multi-institutional collaboration, funded by the NSF, has designed a 6-week MOOC with local learning communities for faculty, postdocs, and graduate students to learn about and implement inclusive learning environments for all their students.
June 2021 - Frey group is back in our offices, yea!
June 2021 - REU student Mark is working with Josh this summer
May 2021 - the group goes on the Living Room hike!
Our group hike made it on the POGIL website!
https://pogil.org/about-the-pogil-project/the-pogil-water-bottle
May 2021 - Hannah and Stella graduate with their Bachelor degrees!
July 2020 - NEOWISE Comet
Our undergraduate researcher and physics & astronomy major, Hannah, went to view NEOWISE through her telescope. Our undergraduate researcher, Dasha, took pictures of the NEOWISE comet and the night sky.
NEOWISE comet
The night sky
