Exploring Science Identity and Latent Factors of Student Gains in a Place-based Marine Science CURE Designed to Provide Access to Hawai'i Students from Historically Marginalized Ethnicities.

Hawai'i students, and in particular Native Hawaiian students, face high rates of attrition and low representation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) academic majors and careers, but place-based Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) such as the Research Experiences in Marine Science (REMS) summer program may help to better engage these students with scientific content understanding and skills development. This article assesses latent factors of student gains after participating in the REMS program as they relate to student science identity. Results from an exploratory factor analysis examining the internal structure of an assessment measure delivered during the program suggest strong evidence of four latent factors in student self-reported learning gains: Content Understanding, Scientific Skills, Interest, and Integration.

Models of Disability as Research Frameworks in Biology Education Research.

Advancing equity and justice in undergraduate biology education requires research to address the experiences of disabled students. Scholars working in disability studies have developed models of disability that inform Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER). To date, DBER literature has been predominantly informed by the medical and social models of disability.

Development of the Mentoring in Undergraduate Research Survey.

Here we present the development of the Mentoring in Undergraduate Research Survey (MURS) as a measure of a range of mentoring experienced by undergraduate science researchers. We drafted items based on qualitative research and refined the items through cognitive interviews and expert sorting. We used one national dataset to evaluate the internal structure of the measure and a second national dataset to examine how responses on the MURS related to theoretically relevant constructs and student characteristics.

Undergraduate Lay Theories of Abilities: Mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs uniquely predict undergraduate educational outcomes.

Students' beliefs about their abilities (called "lay theories") affect their motivations, behaviors, and academic success. Lay theories include beliefs about the potential to improve intelligence (mindset), who (i.e.

Learning Introductory Biology: Students' Concept-Building Approaches Predict Transfer on Biology Exams.

Previous studies have found that students' concept-building approaches, identified a priori with a cognitive psychology laboratory task, are associated with student exam performances in chemistry classes. Abstraction learners (those who extract the principles underlying related examples) performed better than exemplar learners (those who focus on memorizing the training exemplars and responses) on transfer exam questions but not retention questions, after accounting for general ability. We extended these findings to introductory biology courses in which active-learning techniques were used to try to foster deep conceptual learning.

Leveraging Psychosocial Interventions to Motivate Instructor Participation in Teaching Professional Development.

To promote undergraduate education reform, teaching professional development (TPD) efforts aim to encourage instructors to adopt evidence-based practices. However, many instructors do not attend TPD. There may be many reasons for this, including low intrinsic motivation to participate in TPD.

Changing Social Contexts to Foster Equity in College Science Courses: An Ecological-Belonging Intervention.

In diverse classrooms, stereotypes are often "in the air," which can interfere with learning and performance among stigmatized students. Two studies designed to foster equity in college science classrooms (s = 1,215 and 607) tested an intervention to establish social norms that make stereotypes irrelevant in the classroom. At the beginning of the term, classrooms assigned to an ecological-belonging intervention engaged in discussion with peers around the message that social and academic adversity is normative and that students generally overcome such adversity.

Am I a Science Person? A Strong Science Identity Bolsters Minority Students' Sense of Belonging and Performance in College.

Identifying as a "science person" is predictive of science success, but the mechanisms involved are not well-understood. We hypothesized that science identity predicts success because it fosters a sense of belonging in science classrooms. Thus, science identity should be particularly important for first-generation and racial-minority students, who may harbor doubts about belonging in science.

Undergraduate Biology Education Research Gordon Research Conference: A Meeting Report.

The 2019 Undergraduate Biology Education Research Gordon Research Conference (UBER GRC), titled "Achieving Widespread Improvement in Undergraduate Education," brought together a diverse group of researchers and practitioners working to identify, promote, and understand widespread adoption of evidence-based teaching, learning, and success strategies in undergraduate biology. Graduate students and postdocs had the additional opportunity to present and discuss research during a Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) that preceded the GRC. This report provides a broad overview of the UBER GRC and GRS and highlights major themes that cut across invited talks, poster presentations, and informal discussions.

Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence.

Whether students view intelligence as a fixed or malleable trait (i.e., their "mindset") has significant implications for their responses to failure and academic outcomes.

"Where's My Mentor?!" Characterizing Negative Mentoring Experiences in Undergraduate Life Science Research.

Undergraduate research experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are championed for promoting students' personal and professional development. Mentorship is an integral part of undergraduate research, as effective mentorship maximizes the benefits undergraduates realize from participating in research. Yet almost no research examines instances in which mentoring is less effective or even problematic, even though prior research on mentoring in workplace settings suggests negative mentoring experiences are common.

Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers.

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (postgraduates) in the life sciences frequently mentor undergraduate researchers, especially at research universities. Yet there has been only modest investigation of this relationship from the postgraduate perspective. We conducted an exploratory study of the experiences of 32 postgraduate mentors from diverse institutions, life sciences disciplines, and types of research to examine their motivations for mentoring and their perceived outcomes.

Herbivory and relative growth rates of Pieris rapae are correlated with host constitutive salicylic acid and flowering time.

Treatment of plants with exogenous salicylic acid (SA) improves resistance to many bacterial pathogens, but can suppress resistance to insect herbivores. While plants vary naturally in constitutive SA, whether such differences are predictive of resistance to insect herbivores has not been studied previously. We examined the possible role of this endogenous SA in structuring the interactions between the cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, and ten hosts in the mustard family (Brassicaceae).