Category: Academics

This April, students in the honors seminar course Genetics and Genealogy presented their family history narratives in a virtual Class Symposium. As part of this course, students shared inspiring stories of survival, migrations, family traditions, and perseverance. Each student learned something new about their families and where they come from and how they have evolve.

The class research was twofold: students completed genetics studies showing their ancestral markers and also completed a genealogical research project to uncover historical records and other documents. These projects allow students to have a personal connection with historical events. Genetics and Genealogy is unique in that it is taught collaboratively from both a humanities and science perspective by professors James Doan, Ph.D. from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Emily Schmitt Lavin, Ph.D. from Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography.

In addition to these faculty members, the students collaborated with the Alvin Sherman Library to access genealogy resources. This was done with the help of Nora Quinlan, Director of Reference and Instruction. She created a genealogy library guide.

This course is offered through the Honors College under Dean, Don Rosenblum along with a variety of other unique course offerings: https://honors.nova.edu/honors/courses.html

Since the completion of the course, several of the  students have contributed their work to the NSU Works Genealogy Reports Site located at https://nsuworks.nova.edu/genealogy-reports/.

Would you like to learn to play the guitar or improve your playing? NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) offers Beginning Guitar MUSC 1300 throughout the year and recently students provided a Virtual Guitar Orchestra “Concert in the Time of COVID Quarantine.”  Led by adjunct professor Tarra Guerra, M.M., the students in the class learn music notation and rhythms, strumming patterns and to perform major, minor, and seventh chords. The goal is for the class to be enjoyable, and for the members of the class to form a supportive network for each other’s efforts. Each week there are informal opportunities to play both solo and group (ensemble) performances and there are two public class concerts.

Guerra teaches Guitar at CAHSS and runs Suzuki Strings South Florida. She is a member of the Guitar Foundation of America, the Miami Classical Guitar Society, the Florida Guitar Foundation, the Suzuki Associations of the Americas and of South Florida, Morning Musicale, and the Florida Federation of Music Teachers. Guerra has performed original rock in New York City and Seattle, original country in Nashville, Celtic and modern folk in New Zealand and Ireland, Bluegrass in North Carolina and Florida, been a professional one-person band, and is a published songwriter with several solo albums.

The course, Beginning Guitar is offered in the fall in two sections: MUSC 1300 CRN 21772 and MUSC 1300 CRN 21846 both taught by Guerra.

To enjoy the virtual concert, please see: https://youtu.be/7Ak7AZ5-Vvo

This spring, undergraduates Brian Kim, Rohan Muchintala, Owayne Haughton, and their faculty advisors Santanu De, Ph.D. and Arthur Sikora, Ph.D. had their abstract “Novel assessment strategies for biochemistry courses using the research-based Biochemistry Authentic Student Inquiry Lab (BASIL) model” accepted by the South Florida Section American Chemical Society’s Chemical Sciences Symposium, 2020 organized by Larkin University, Miami, FL. Unfortunately, the symposium was cancelled due to COVID-19 shutdown.

Their abstract is as follows:

Recently, many academic units have started implementing Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) to increase student research opportunities. CUREs offer the key advantage of course integration that enables all students to participate in a research project, irrespective of economic or time constraints. A major obstacle hindering further expansion of CUREs centers around the design of assessments. Designing more effective content and assessment tools for this growing group of courses presents unique challenges. New adopters often struggle with important pedagogical decisions while shifting from traditional cookbook biochemistry labs featuring predetermined answers to ones that focus on student-driven discovery demonstrating the scientific method. Nova Southeastern University recently implemented a CURE-based laboratory course using the discovery-based BASIL (Biochemistry Authentic Student Inquiry Lab) model. Students hypothesize and test functions of enzymes with no known function, through wet-lab and computational approaches. Using established Anticipated Learning Outcomes (ALOs) established for BASIL, specific assessment questions were created. Likert scale analysis was employed to analyze responses from students enrolled in the biochemistry course to determine mastery of the ALOs. Identification of deficiencies in understanding permits targeted intervention using lab procedure changes and assessment optimization. The complex nature of ALOs frequently demand diverse assessment design. While assessment tools were tailored according to the varied ALO statements, interesting patterns were observed. Student responses indicated notable improvement in comprehension of bioinformatic concepts by the semester’s end. Several ALOs were detected as areas requiring improvement. This allowed for better designs of experimentation, questionnaire and explanation. Understanding the fundamental problems students face when first entering research will help attract more talented students from diverse backgrounds to vital chemistry/biochemistry courses. This preliminary study can expose undergraduate students to the experience of participation in a research project, guide the transition of ALOs to VLOs (Verified Learning Outcomes), and lead to novel assessment strategies towards standardized adoption of CUREs across educational institutions and curricula, potentially transforming the way chemical sciences are taught. The BASIL project is funded by NSF IUSE 1503811 and 1709170.

This spring, undergraduates Brian Kim, Rohan Muchintala, Owayne Haughton, and their faculty advisors Santanu De, Ph.D. and Arthur Sikora, Ph.D. had their abstract accepted by the Biennal Conference on Chemical Education, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR. Unfortunately, the symposium was cancelled due to COVID-19 shutdown. The title of their abstract is “Design of research-based assessment strategies for a biochemistry CURE using published learning outcomes”.

The Biennial Conference on Chemical Education (BCCE) is a national meeting sponsored by the Division of Chemical Education (DivCHED) of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The conference is designed for those who teach chemistry at all levels: K-12, secondary school science teachers, undergraduate students, graduate students and post-secondary chemistry faculty.

The conference provides chemistry educators with opportunities for interacting with colleagues at all levels in formal and informal settings. Instructors who are new to chemistry education and those who have years of teaching experience will find this conference to be an excellent source of materials, techniques and chemistry content.

The course, HIST 4700, Genocide in the 20^th Century and Beyond, offered by the Department of History and Political Science (DHPS) in NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) ended the term with a Zoom meeting with the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF).  After visiting Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, and sites such as Auschwitz and Srebrenica, and meeting with survivors of the Bosnian genocide, one last step was to talk with a survivor of the current catastrophe in Syria. Connecting with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, students in HIST 4700 were honored with a 2-hour Zoom session featuring Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of SETF, and Natalie Larrison, the director of outreach.  They run a host of programs including supporting an orphanage and providing humanitarian aid and support for people in Syria.

As part of the session, Omar Aslhogre, a survivor of torture in Assad’s prisons, spoke to the class describing his experiences, and how he survived. Arrested seven times by the time he was 17, his final arrest resulted in a brutal stay of three years in various Syrian Prisons, including the notorious Sedanya Prison. He told the story of the “University of Whispers.”  He finally escaped after his mother paid a bribe. Upon his release, Aslhogre weighed barely 75 pounds. Aslhogre has also testified before Congress and along with Moustafa, has been instrumental in getting the Caesar Bill passed by Congress and signed by the President.

Gary Gershman, J.D., Ph.D., professor in the DHPS and course instructor, arranged the Zoom session. He has a working relationship with the SETF. Gershman was one of two recipients of the 2017 Curt C. and Else Silberman Faculty Seminar Follow-Up Grant for the United States

For more information about the Syrian Emergency Task Force, please see their website at: https://www.syriantaskforce.org/.  For more information about the course, please contact Gershman at ggershma@nova.edu

From May 5 to May 12, Halmos Faculty Member Arthur Sikora, Ph.D. collaborated with faculty around the country to present their video entitled, “Rich Collaborations Yield More than Expected: BASIL lab. This curriculum from the BASIL (Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Laboratory) collaboration aims to get students to transition from thinking like students to thinking and acting like scientists. Students will analyze proteins with known structure but unknown function using both computational and wet-lab techniques. BASIL is designed for undergraduate biochemistry lab courses but can be adapted to first year (or even high school) settings, as well as upper-level undergraduate or graduate coursework. It is targeted to students in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, or related majors.

Sikora stated, “We have been fortunate to have robust anticipated learning outcomes that were developed by our collaborators at Purdue. The full set is published in “Anticipated Learning Outcomes for a Biochemistry Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience Aimed at Predicting Protein Function from Structure: Implications for Assessment Design” Irby et al BAMBED 2018. Several members of the group have started working with these ALOs to design targeted assessments.”

The 2020 National Science Foundation (NSF) STEM for All Video Showcase is an annual online event. Each year, it hosts between 100-200 three-minute video presentations from federally funded projects that aim to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and computer science education. During the seven days of this online event, Principal Investigators, practitioners, administrators, researchers, policy makers, industry and the public at large are encouraged to participate. All participants will be able to view the video presentations, post to the facilitated discussions related to each video, and vote for the videos that are most effective in conveying the creative work being done. All videos and discussions will be archived for perpetual future access. In addition, all videos from this Showcase will be added to the collection in the STEM for All Multiplex after the online May event.