Mindy Reynolds
Washington College, MD·Education Research
Teaching methods backed by research, known as evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs), can improve learning, raise achievement for historically marginalized students and help students stay in STEM. Faculty at two-year colleges and minority-serving institutions often have heavy teaching loads and few resources, which makes these methods harder to adopt.
- Fields
Education Research
Biology
- Topics
evidence-based instructional practices
faculty mentoring
co-mentoring
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Establish FAMNet, a structured co-mentoring network that pairs faculty experienced in evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) with faculty mentees across two-year and four-year colleges.
- Build a learning community through monthly virtual mentor–mentee meetings and cohort discussions of articles on EBIPs, their implementation and the challenges faculty face.
- Hold a final in-person session at the SABER biology education conference with workshops, practice teaching sessions and planning of classroom EBIP activities.
- Evaluate how FAMNet affects faculty use of EBIPs and how well the mentoring works, using surveys before and after participation.
More about the research
Students who transfer from two-year to four-year colleges also face challenges that faculty at both kinds of schools may not fully understand.
Why it matters
The network could help faculty at two-year and four-year colleges adopt teaching methods shown to improve learning and keep students in STEM. That may especially benefit transfer students and students from historically marginalized groups in undergraduate biology. It could also help four-year colleges better support students who arrive from two-year schools.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Heather Vance-Chalcraft
East Carolina University, NC·Education Research
Build a community of practice among undergraduate instructors using citizen science, the inclusion of the public in scientific research, across face-to-face and online courses and including minority-serving institutions.
Walter Freeman
Syracuse University, NY·Education Research
Establish regional PICUP faculty-development workshops, sustained by local leaders, that help physics instructors integrate computational activities into undergraduate courses, with emphasis on Minority Serving Institutions and two-year colleges.
Arthur Sikora
Nova Southeastern University, FL·Education Research
Identify the supports for and barriers to implementing and sustaining the BASIL biochemistry CURE across institution types, using faculty surveys, implementation plans and semi-structured interviews.
The school
Washington College: 2 labs on PI Pages.
Reach out
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