UPbeat

News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.

Stephanie Salomone

2020 Difference Award Winners Announced

The athletic department would like to acknowledge this year’s winners of the Difference Award. Each year, student-athletes nominate a professor on campus who they felt made a difference in their University of Portland experience. The definition is left intentionally vague, allowing students to reflect on the many ways a professor may have made a difference to them. This year, four people were selected as winners:

  • Stephanie Salomone
  • Martin Monto
  • Montana Hisel-Cochran
  • Thomas Greene

These four will be honored at a UP Men’s basketball game on Thursday, February 20, at 6 p.m., at the Chiles Center. Please come out and enjoy the game and congratulate our winners for their support of all of our students on campus, including our student-athletes.

REFLECT: Your Teaching Matters. Make It Matter More!

Online registration for “The Making of a T1 University” is now open, according to Tara Prestholdt, biology. All faculty are welcome to join colleagues and administrators from regional universities to share your experiences. The $20 registration fee includes all concurrent sessions, hosted JOY lunch, plenary speaker, cocktail hour, and banquet dinner (fee waived for presenters).

This invitation comes from the University’s REFLECT (Redesigning Education For Learning through Evidence and Collaborative Teaching) project. REFLECT is dedicated to significantly increasing the use of highly effective, evidence-based STEM teaching methods at the University of Portland using peer observation.

Ideas for posters, presentations, discussions, and workshops include:

  • Evidence-based instructional practices
  • Formative assessment
  • Technology in the classroom
  • Equity and diversity
  • Creativity and cognitive demand

Registration closes on Saturday, February 29. Questions? Email Stephanie Salomone (salomone@up.edu) or Tara Prestholdt (holdt@up.edu).

Your 2019 ACUBE Excellence in Teaching Award Winner: Tara Prestholdt

Tara Prestholdt, biology, won the 2019 Excellence in Teaching Award at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association of College and University Biology Educators (ACUBE). The award is offered annually to honor faculty who both practice and promote effective, innovative teaching in the biology classroom.

While the entire campus is no doubt aware of Prestholdt’s polymathic proficiency, mathematics professor Stephanie Salomone explains it best: “Tara is a true mentor to her undergraduates. Tara’s expectations for her co-researchers are high. They will not just do good science, but they will be able to explain their work to people who are as far as possible from experts. They will not just enjoy science, or like science; they will find science exciting,the process of discovery exhilarating, and the difficult cognitive task of explaining science to laymen motivating. Every student that I’ve known who has worked in Tara’s lab has come out skilled in scientific research, and eager to get back into the lab or the field to do more.

“Further, Tara Prestholdt is dedicated to improving undergraduate education on campus and beyond. Tara’s work on the NSF-funded REFLECT project has helped transform the culture of undergraduate STEM education at UP into one that responds to the evidence of what makes for great teaching – active, hands-on, engaged approaches to instruction. She is a supportive mentor for other faculty who are new to evidence-based practices, she is innovative in her own approaches to teaching, and she is a leader who deeply deserves this recognition.”

 

 

 

STEM Center Joy of Teaching Lunch, Nov. 14

Join the STEM Education and Outreach Center and the Garaventa Center for their Joy of Teaching brown bag lunch on Thursday, November 14, noon to 1 p.m., in Franz Hall 120. The theme of this lunch is “Hope.” Time to gather with like-minded joyful teachers for sharing of information, impressions, and the ends and pieces of leftover Halloween candy.

For more information please email salomone@up.edu or childs20@up.edu.

Women In Leadership Forum Guest Speaker: Stephanie Salomone, Sept. 10

The Women in Leadership Forum welcomes UP mathematics professor and STEM Center director Stephanie Salomon on Tuesday, September 10, at 6 p.m., in Franz Hall room 120. The Women in Leadership Forum connects students, faculty, and staff with dynamic women who are leaders in the Portland community. The Forum is a place for sharing stories, building connections, and supporting the development of women in leadership. Salomone will share her experiences as a woman leader in STEM and academia, as well as insights she’s gained around inclusion, equity, and mentorship.

For more information contact Claire Moore, business, at moorec@up.edu.

Sigma XI Outstanding Researcher Award for Hannah Highlander

Hannah Highlander, mathematics, has been awarded the 11th Annual Sigma Xi Outstanding Researcher Award, given annually by the Columbia-Willamette Chapter of Sigma Xi, the international scientific research honorary society. She will be honored at a ceremony on May 28. College of Arts and Science dean and mathematics faculty member Herbert Medina points out that this is the second consecutive year that a UP mathematics faculty member has won the award (with Aaron Wootton winning kin 2018).

Highlander’s current scholarship lies in the area of mathematical biology. She has 22 peer reviewed scholarly articles spanning a career of 12 years, a rate which rivals those of some of the most productive mathematicians in the United States– while at the same time teaching three classes per semester. Five of these publications include undergraduate authors – almost one quarter of her published articles include collaboration with undergraduates.

Highlander’s work is tied to topics of deep importance to the UP community, including work on mathematical modeling of the Green Dot Bystander Intervention data to prevent sexual assault. Her summer 2019 undergraduate research project, Mathematical Modeling of Suicide Risk and Assessment of Preventative Measures could add considerably to the literature on risk factors of suicide among a vulnerable population. She is also a key contributor to the new Applied Mathematics program (and B.S. in Applied Mathematics major) at UP.

Please join the mathematics department in offering congratulations to Dr. Highlander. For more information contact Stephanie Salomone, mathematics, at salomone@up.edu.

 

Rumble in the Jungle: Reading and STEM Fair, Feb. 24

The University’s annual Reading Fair will take place on Sunday, February 24, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., in the Chiles Center. “Rumble in the Jungle” will be a reading fair and family STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) day hosted by Kappa Delta Pi and the UP STEM Education and Outreach Center. The fair is freeand open to all children from preschool through 8th grade.

There will be crafts, a principal reading, hands on-experiments, and a robotics demonstration. In addition to these activities, there will also be fun games, and opportunities to win prizes. Students will leave the event with a free book and gift from both organizations as a thank-you for attending.

This is a new combined event you do not want to miss. If you have any questions, please reach out to Reading Fair chair Surabhi Joglekar (joglekar20@up.edu) or STEM director Stephanie Salomone (salomone@up.edu)). Please like the “University of Portland’s Reading Fair” FaceBook page for more updated information.

Stephanie Salomone: An Outstanding Educator

The Oregon Academy of Science has selected Stephanie Salomone, mathematics, as a winner of the OAS 2019 Outstanding Educator: Higher Education award.

Nominees for this award have a demonstrated record of outstanding teaching in any of the subject areas encompassed by the Academy; nominees are judged on the unique contributions made by the candidate to teaching excellence in higher education science and/or mathematics classrooms.

Salomone will be presented with her award at the 2019 annual meeting of the OAS at Linfield College on Saturday, February 23, at 1 p.m., in Graf Hall 100. Colleagues from UP are invited to attend without registering for the conference but are asked to register if they wish to attend the full conference and lunch.

For more information go to this link or contact abaggett@linfield.edu.

REFLECT Institute Meets May 14-17: Thinking Deeply About STEM Teaching

The REFLECT Institute, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources grant, met on the UP campus from May 14-17 for four days of deep thinking about defining and moving towards a vision for STEM teaching excellence at the University of Portland. Attendees included mentors Eric Anctil, Heather Dillon, Carolyn James, Valerie Peterson, Tara Prestholdt, and Stephanie Salomone; and fellows Laurie Dizney, Eli Goldwyn, Ryan Kenton, Elliot Mylott, Cara Poor, Niki Schulz, Kristin Sweeney, Jen Symons, Buck Taylor, Tammy VanDeGrift, and Christine Weilhoefer.

The group worked on barriers and mitigators to changing pedagogies, applied brainstorming to their classes and teaching, and crafted the following vision statement:

“Teaching and learning at the University of Portland is characterized by student-driven learning, fostering an inclusive learning and campus community through excellent student support services, interdisciplinary curricula, and collaboration between all community members. We value learning and understanding over memorization and the utility of concepts and skills connecting to the real world. We create supportive and collaborative environments for teachers to innovate while being informed by best practices and promoting critical thinking and problem solving. UP is a T1 University that supports excellence in teaching and learning with money, time, and staff. We prepare students to be transformational change agents in a global world by teaching the head, heart, and hands.”

For more information contact Salomone at salomone@up.edu.

New $400,000 NOYCE Grant for UP

Stephanie Salomone, mathematics, has successfully completed a grant proposal which will allow the University to take part in a $3.3 million grant through the Western Regional Noyce Alliance. Salomone will serve as principal investigator on a subcontract of $400,000 to plan and run a Western Regional Noyce Conference in Portland in February 2020. This will be different than UP’s current Noyce grant, also led by Salomone. The conference will be a professional development opportunity for pre-service and in-service K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers in high-needs schools who have participated in Noyce programs in the Western part of the United States. It will also engage teacher educators from higher education in dialog about how to better prepare and retain teachers in high-needs schools.

This has been a collaborative effort with many other institutions, including San Francisco State University, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, San Diego State University, Northern Arizona University, University of Texas Arlington, Fresno State, and Arizona.

For more information contact Salomone at salomone@up.edu.