Dauer expanding class’s civic engagement with grant

Jenny Dauer, lead instructor of the Science Literacy 101 class
Jenny Dauer, lead instructor of the Science Literacy 101 class

By Ronica Stromberg

Jenny Dauer, associate director for undergraduate education in the School of Natural Resources, received a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant this fall to look further at how the Science Literacy 101 class can encourage civic engagement in undergraduate students.

This is the third Improving Undergraduate STEM Education grant she has received for the class as the lead instructor in the past six years. She also received a National Science Foundation Core grant from 2019-2023.

"I feel really excited about this grant because it's an important area to expand our capacity as science educators," Dauer said. "There are very few classrooms that have the opportunity to pursue interesting questions like what we do in Science Literacy 101 because they're obligated to talk about particular content, but we're free from that. We can focus on skills that prepare students to be problem solvers and make differences in their communities."

All students in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources are required to take Science Literacy 101: Science and Decision Making for a Complex World. About 600 students take it each year under a cross-disciplinary team of professors and postdocs led by Dauer.

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