Pratibha Varma-Nelson was recently awarded the Bicentennial Medal from Indiana University. The Bicentennial Medal recognizes "distinguished and distinctive service, broadly defined, in support of Indiana University's mission as a public university, individuals who enlarged the footprint of IU, or helped to put IU on the map in unique ways." The medal was designed by Jeeyea Kim of IU's School of Art, Architecture + Design.

SEIRI congratulates Annwesa Dasgupta. Annwesa has recently been recruited by the University of Mississippi as Assistant Director of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness. Annwesa will oversee and guide the advancement of Thinkforward, the University of Mississippi's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). Thinkforward is designed to foster critical thinking skill development in lower-division, general education courses and co-curricular learning experiences by enhancing faculty development and modifying student learning environments. In operation, Annwesa in coordination with the QEP director, will make decisions about the effectiveness of QEP programs, modifications to the QEP programming, and the impact the QEP has on faculty, students, and the UM learning environment. Annwesa will be missed by all of us who have worked with her.

Danka Maric, SEIRI Research Associate, will be the coordinator of the SSG program along with Snehasis Mukhopadhyay,Associate Director. Danka has been with SEIRI for the past year.

SEIRI welcomes the following faculty as SEIRI Faculty Associates. A SEIRI Faculty Associate serves as a leader in the IUPUI community by engaging in scholarly practices in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or informatics education such as Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) or Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER). These appointments are made for 3 years.

• Lingma Acheson, Senior Lecturer, Computer & Information Science.
• Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, Professor, Founding Director, Applied Social and Organizational Psychology Doctoral Program Director, Industrial/Organizational Psychology Master's Program.
• Brenda Blacklock, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry & Chemical Biology.
• Anthony Chase, Assistant Professor, Occupational Therapy.
• Charles Feldhaus, Technical Leadership and Communication Professor, Organizational Leadership and Supervision.
• Gabriel Filippelli, Chancellor's Professor of Earth Sciences, Director, Center for Urban Health.
• Andy Gavrin, Department Chair, Physics Associate Professor, Physics.
• Sharon Miller, Associate Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Director of the Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Program, Clinical Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering.
• Angela Murillo, Assistant Professor, School of Informatics and Computing Program Director, Applied Data and Information Science.
• Saptarshi Purkayastha, Assistant Professor - Data Science, Health Informatics, School of Informatics & Computing & Director of Undergraduate Education & Research, BHI & Affiliated Scientist, CBMI, Regenstrief Institute.
• Brandon Sorge, Assistant Professor, Technology Leadership and Communication.
• Gautam Vemuri, Professor, Physics
• Jeffrey Watt, Department Chair, Mathematical Sciences Professor, Mathematical Science, The M. L. Bittinger Chair of Mathematics Education.
• Robert Weissbach, Chair, Department of Engineering Technology.

See all SEIRI's faculty associates

The presentation on 3/23/21 by Elaine Seymour (Director Emerita, Ethnography & Evaluation Research, University of Colorado at Boulder), Why We Are Still Talking about Leaving, was attended by over 75 people on ZOOM.

Elaine Seymour presented a selection of her research team's findings from their multi-methods, 5-year study reported in "Talking about Leaving Revisited: Persistence Relocation and Loss in Undergraduate STEM Education" (2019, Eds. Seymour and Hunter, Springer). She focuses on what contributors to student losses from STEM majors have and have not changed since the original 1997 (Seymour & Hewitt) study and what new contributors to loss have emerged. She presents the team's new evidence on why particular student groups are most at risk and what factors contribute most to their persistence difficulties.

Recap on Dr. Elaine Seymour presentation

SEIRI would like to congratulate the following faculty and their projects:

Abstracts of the projects are available online.

See SEIRI 2020 seed grant program recipients

There is a new NSF funding program to create a network of information and evaluation of S-STEM programs. Through this solicitation, NSF seeks to foster a network of S-STEM stakeholders and further develop the infrastructure needed to generate and disseminate new knowledge, successful practices and effective design principles arising from NSF S-STEM projects nationwide.

More information about this NSF funding

Talking about Leaving Revisited: Persistence, Relocation, and Loss in Undergraduate STEM Education 1st ed. 2019 Edition by Elaine Seymour (Editor), Anne-Barrie Hunter (Editor), Heather Thiry (Contributor), Timothy J. Weston (Contributor), Raquel P. Harper (Contributor), Dana G. Holland (Contributor)

Talking about Leaving Revisited: Persistence, Relocation, and Loss in Undergraduate STEM Education 1st ed. 2019 Edition

Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave The Sciences 1st Edition

If you have something you would like to see added to the SEIRI Newsletter, please contact Sheila Summers, shesumme@iupui.edu, , and let her know. We would like to include information you feel is beneficial to you.

Thank you for reading our newsletter. Feel free to contact us with suggestions. If you have speakers in STEM education, please let us know and we will be glad to include them. Please check our website at seiri.iupui.edu for more information.