By Marcia Linn
I am deeply honored to be named the Evelyn Lois Corey Chair in Instructional Science. I especially want to thank my colleagues for their willingness to select me
for this award. I am thrilled to celebrate the generosity of Evelyn Lois Corey ‘36, who was a public school teacher in Oakland, by broadening and publicizing theresearch agenda in instructional science and STEM learning, with a focus on diversity and inclusion. The goal of the Corey chair resonates with my interests in improving teaching and learning with insights from instructional science.
I am using the resources of the chair to explore leading edge topics emerging from collaborations with local teachers. For example, the teachers would like more evidence concerning how best to prepare their students to improve, refine, redesign, and reformulate their views of controversial topics such as climate science, energy efficiency, and vaccine safety as new evidence emerges.
This is a timely goal as citizens grapple with conflicting claims about these topics. Teachers note that students critique music, fashion, and movies and would like to build on this practice to promote a critical stance toward science. We are collaborating on pilot studies and we anticipate that these pilot studies will enrich proposals for extramural funding.
To strengthen campus insights into instructional science and STEM, I also plan to use the chair resources to sponsor an annual Evelyn Lois Corey (ELC) Scholar who will interact with the community and speak at the GSE and SESAME colloquia. The ELC Scholar will bring a focus on equity and inclusion as well as bridge the STEM disciplines and instructional science. These activities are intended to increase interactions between students and faculty in the GSE and STEM departments who share an interest in improving teaching and learning.
Read Professor Linn's full biography.
