An Unconventional Collaboration at the College Level To Improve STEM Student Success

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the work that has resulted from a collaboration between a biology professor, a school psychology professor, a researcher in higher education access, and the writing programs director. The essential school psychologist role, as classroom observer and data analyzer, is discussed through an example of work done as part of a larger project focusing on student success and retention for at-risk populations in introductory college biology courses. Best practices for consulting at the college level are discussed and include: collaborate to cultivate the willing, collect and analyze data to sustain instructor involvement, and communicate and advocate. We hope that the model exemplified here might inspire future interdisciplinary collaborations that draw on school psychology expertise to design and conduct research

SMARCA2-deficiency confers sensitivity to targeted inhibition of SMARCA4 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell lines

SMARCA4/BRG1 and SMARCA2/BRM, the two mutually exclusive catalytic subunits of the BAF complex, display a well-established synthetic lethal relationship in SMARCA4-deficient cancers. Using CRISPR-Cas9 screening, we identify SMARCA4 as a novel dependency in SMARCA2-deficient esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) models, reciprocal to the known synthetic lethal interaction. Restoration of SMARCA2 expression alleviates the dependency on SMARCA4, while engineered loss of SMARCA2 renders ESCC models vulnerable to concomitant depletion of SMARCA4. Dependency on SMARCA4 is linked to its ATPase activity, but not to bromodomain function. We highlight the relevance of SMARCA4 as a drug target in esophageal cancer using an engineered ESCC cell model harboring a SMARCA4 allele amenable to targeted proteolysis and identify SMARCA4-dependent cell models with low or absent SMARCA2 expression from additional tumor types. These findings expand the concept of SMARCA2/SMARCA4 paralog dependency and suggest that pharmacological inhibition of SMARCA4 represents a novel therapeutic opportunity for SMARCA2-deficient cancers

Leveraging Innovation in Science Education: Using Writing and Assessment to Decode the Class Size Conundrum

Introductory biology courses are supposed to serve as gateways for many majors, but too often they serve instead as gatekeepers. Reliance on lectures, large classes, and multiple-choice tests results in high drop and failure rates. Critiques of undergraduate science education are clear about the problems with conventional introductory science courses, and yet the problems persist. As David Hanauer and Cynthia Bauerle explain, Given the potential for science to address important problems, undergraduate programs ought to be functioning as busy portals for engaging students\u27 innate fascination and developing their understanding of the nature and practice of science. Instead, recent studies suggest, the opposite is true: over half of the students who enter college with an interest in science do not persist in their training beyond the first year or two of introductory coursework. Researchers and expert practitioners have long proposed using student-centered, active learning strategies to improve engagement, learning, and achievement. Others have documented the ways class size is important for student-centered pedagogy. Following Hanauer and Bauerle, who recommend using assessment reform to facilitate such curricular innovations, the authors contend that the better the assessment and the more focused the guidance provided to the instructor, the greater the leverage. This article presents findings from a pilot study suggesting that authentic assessment embedded in best teaching practices can show what kind of change is needed. The study allowed the authors to observe the relative impacts of both class size and the use of writing as an assessment strategy, and thus to identify the sequence reform efforts must take. The purposes of this article are, first, to report on the experience responding to Hanauer and Bauerle\u27s call, and second, to identify the key components that gave that reform lever additional power: the careful selection and preliminary testing of essay questions requiring critical thinking, the reduced size of one section of an entry-level biology course, the support of a networked improvement community, and guidance for the instructor during the testing of new method

Nipped in the Bud: COVID-19 Reveals the Malleability of STEM Student Self-Efficacy.

When a global pandemic hits during a longitudinal study of biology student success, researchers can unearth rich information about student resilience. By sharing case studies from two demographically different midsized 4-year institutions, this article illustrates the aspects of student self-efficacy beliefs that were undercut by the shift to emergency remote instruction (ERI) in introductory biology courses in Spring 2020: agency and belonging. By assessing student predictions of exam performance and analyzing themes from 276 student narrative surveys, we highlight the power of a careful balance between cognitive and social interventions to help students recover. Students in this study showed a 50% loss of efficacy beliefs after ERI (midsemester) but were able to improve to at least 75% above starting efficacy beliefs after instructor interventions. Thus, we also show how academic efficacy is highly malleable and is mediated in relationships. In turn, we demonstrate a new assessment model that uses student narrative writing to reveal "invisible" threats to students' perceptions of their capacity to succeed. Finally, we generalize from their findings to provide recommendations for effective strategies for supporting those students for whom every semester feels like a pandemic

An Unconventional Collaboration at the College Level To Improve STEM Student Success

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the work that has resulted from a collaboration between a biology professor, a school psychology professor, a researcher in higher education access, and the writing programs director. The essential school psychologist role, as classroom observer and data analyzer, is discussed through an example of work done as part of a larger project focusing on student success and retention for at-risk populations in introductory college biology courses. Best practices for consulting at the college level are discussed and include: collaborate to cultivate the willing, collect and analyze data to sustain instructor involvement, and communicate and advocate. We hope that the model exemplified here might inspire future interdisciplinary collaborations that draw on school psychology expertise to design and conduct research