New essay published in CBE - Life Sciences Education. Robin led a 28-authored essay the explores both the benefits and costs related to designing and implementing educational materials in life sciences courses that feature counter-stereotypical scientists from the perspective of three groups: students, instructors, and the featured scientists.

New paper published in Nordic Journal of STEM Education. In a study of students at a university in Norway where STEM courses are graded by only one or two high-stakes exams, we found negative impacts of test anxiety on academic performance. When asked to envision their ideal assessment practices, students preferred to be assessed with practices known to reduce the impact of test anxiety. This suggests that allowing for student input in assessment practices can help optimize student learning.

This manuscript resulted from Robin's visit to Sehoya Cotner's group at the University of Bergen, Norway, which was supported by a Mobility Grant from the Norwegian Research Council.

Ballen lab reunion in Panamá! We danced the night away in Gamboa for the wedding of dear friends from Auburn.

Robin just finished giving three different invited seminars sharing work on student persistence in STEM and the representation of scientists in biology. It was great reconnecting with friends and meeting new colleagues at Rochester Institute of Technology, Northern Illinois University, and Iowa State University. Thanks to Dina Newman, Crystal Uminski, Heather Bergan-Roller,  Liza Mitchem, Sayli Kukday, and Clark Coffman for the seminar invitations and for being such wonderful hosts!

New paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society - B. We found that providing information about scientists' life experiences increased student engagement in quantitative biology activities and that these results were strongest for students who shared excluded identities with the featured scientists. 

Check out the press release here and media coverage here.

Emily Driessen visited UB and gave an incredible talk on student struggle in undergraduate STEM courses! It was so nice to host this rock star in biology education research and to visit frozen Niagara Falls (after a stop at Tim Horton's first!).

The inaugural BER reading group at UB! For our first meeting, we discussed Emily Driessen's paper on group work.

Wonderful new lab members joined the lab! Huge welcome to Margaret Adams (MA student) and to four impressive undergraduate students: Catherine Clark, Dee Dolce, Justin Uralil, and Mariel Uzhca.

Progress has been made setting up the lab!

It's official! The Costello lab is open! Clearly, there's a lot of work to be done!

Robin was awarded the SSE Presidents' Award for Outstanding Dissertation Paper Honorable Mention for her dissertation work on multilevel selection in beetles!

Robin finished a tour of conference presentations this summer. She presented work on the representation of scientists at the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Summit in Washington DC and at the 3rd Joint Congress of Evolutionary Biology in Montreal. She also presented work on persistence in STEM at SABER in Minneapolis.