Relationship-Rich Education and Diversifying Scientists • by Jean Anastasia (Professor of Biology, Ammerman)
Dr. Anastasia works hard to develop relationship-rich education for her students, beginning every class with a check in and reaching out often to individual students to better identify and address any concerns or obstacles. Relying on concepts addressed in the text Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College by Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert, she crafts her classroom to encourage, establish, and maintain quality relationships with all those who enter, majors and non-majors, strugglers and superstars. In her video, Dr. Anastasia describes how this helps increase students' sense of belonging, not only in college but in her science classroom and labs.
In addition, Dr. Anastasia creates and thoughtfully integrates "inspirational investigator inserts" throughout her course content. She shares resources such as Project Biodiversify and the Scientist Spotlights Initiative that she uses to highlight research by scientists from a diversity of backgrounds. It's important, she notes, to do this while covering regular course content. The racial diversity of the scientists she's highlighting isn't tacked on. It's integrated seamlessly into her current course content; Dr. Anastasia is simply choosing from a broader range of scientists than what we might find in the average American classroom.