Dr. Emily Weigel selected as a USG Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellow

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Emily Weigel, an academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences, has been selected to be part of the next cohort of USG Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Fellows.

Dr. Emily Weigel

The USG SoTL Fellows Program was created to foster and support a community of learners across the USG as they design and develop classroom-based research projects. Each year, up to ten participants are selected to represent the four sectors of colleges and universities in the USG — with just one coming from a research university like Georgia Tech. Throughout the program fellows conduct individual research, or collaborate with other fellows to implement cross-institutional projects.

Dr. Weigel brings a background full of experience working on teaching and learning initiatives in STEM fields. She plans to pursue a project focused on giving undergraduate students authentic research experiences that include the use of new statistical tools that are not often part of the undergraduate curriculum.

In her words,

Currently, the biggest gap we have in the BS Biology degree is preparing students for the data analysis/coding needs of a 21st century biologist. We have an excellent MS program in Bioinformatics which could leverage off of our own undergraduates’ increased abilities to code, but this will best work if students use coding to solve the problems in which they are interested and in the context of real biology. … We have the opportunity to be real leaders on this, and the SoTL Fellows Program is a great avenue to do that.

Congratulations, Emily, and we look forward to hearing more about your work as it progresses!