Transitions in development – an interview with Rosa Uribe

Rosa Uribe is an Assistant Professor of BioSciences at Rice University. Having established her lab in 2017, her research focusses on identifying the genetic, cellular and signalling-level mechanisms of neural crest stem cell proliferation, migration and differentiation during embryogenesis. We caught up with Rosa to find out more about her career, her opinions about mentorship and a series of virtual seminars that she co-organises.

Flipped teaching eased the transition from face-to-face teaching to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rice University canceled classes for the week of March 9–13, 2020 and shifted all instruction to online only following spring break. For the second half of the semester, animal physiology was taught exclusively over Zoom. Here we describe how a flipped teaching format that was used before the pandemic eased the transition from face-to-face teaching to online instruction. The preclass preparation resources and the active learning materials that were already in place for flipped teaching were helpful in the transition to solely online teaching. Therefore, the focus during the transition was to reconfigure active learning and examinations from the face-to-face format to the online platform. Instead of small group discussions in the classroom, teams interacted in Zoom Breakout Rooms. Rather than taking exams in-person during scheduled class time, students submitted exams online. Additionally, students prerecorded their project presentations instead of presenting them “live” during the last week of classes. Overall, students felt that the class smoothly transitioned to a remote only format. These and other changes to the instructional methods will be implemented during the Spring 2021 semester when the course is taught fully online.

Reducing educational inequality through research-practice partnerships

Although researchers have done effective work at describing the inequities that plague schools, they have been less successful at making headway in addressing them, largely because their work remains disconnected from the schools that have to try to use the research. Through research-practice partnerships, researchers are able to stay in touch with the educators on the ground, craft research questions with their actual problems in mind, and help them take action in response to the research. Daniel Potter, Erin Baumgartner, and Ruth N. López Turley describe how, through the Houston Education Research Consortium, researchers from Rice University launched an equity project to uncover inequities within Houston-area schools and track their progress in addressing them. And, because of the ongoing relationship, they were able to launch a research project looking into how the COVID-19 pandemic affected students and produce results while schools where they were still relevant.

An Account of the Cultures of Energy Podcast as Collaboration—Offered in Podcast Form, of Course

This chapter covers the cultures of energy podcast as collaboration, which delves into the aspect of the listener experience that demonstrates how much expert knowledge and trade talk a person is willing to absorb and familiarize. It describes podcasts as listening to an entertaining serialized conversation and the ante is a willingness to learn something about the social world. It also emphasizes that the real pleasure of a podcast is imagining oneself as part of an interesting conversation among voices one likes wherein the content of the conversation can be anything. The chapter focuses on the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (CENHS) at Rice University, which does a podcast on energy or environment issues. It discusses the in-person connection as a compelling way of knowing the voice or the pen beyond the page, and beyond the text that one reads.

Recovering a Lost History: Colonel (Retired) Thomas R. Stone and the Unwritten Biography of General William H. Simpson

General William H. Simpson served as commander of Ninth US Army during the Second World War but remains one of the only American field army commanders from that war without a published biography. Colonel (Retired) Thomas R. Stone, PhD, intended to write a biography of General Simpson after completion of his master’s and doctoral degrees at Rice University, but never completed it, leaving one to wonder why. The author’s search for an answer to this question has yielded a trove of previously lost archival data, a fruitful collaboration, and several insights about the unique nature of the path to historian and practice of history for the current or former US Army officer.