Involvement

The Palmer Lab is dedicated to improving the scientific community at CU and beyond, as well as to mentoring and teaching the future generation of scientists. Dr. Palmer and her lab members have been involved in the development of the biochemistry curriculum and in the improvement of specific courses. The Palmer Lab fosters a constructive environment for scientists of all ages and skills to improve their techniques and learn more about the scientific process.

Dr. Palmer and her graduate students are committed to improving STEM education, especially for our undergraduates here at CU. In 2015, Amy spearheaded a Department effort to redesign the first two years of curriculum for Chemistry and Biochemistry majors. Amy and her team developed a proposal to restructure the curriculum, promote collaboration between courses, and create five new classes in an effort to adopt innovations in STEM education, emphasize critical thinking, and integrate more advanced material at an earlier stage.

New Courses

Amy has led the charge in designing three new courses for the undergraduates of CU Boulder:

BCHM 3100 and 3110: Engineering RNA Aptamers Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) and Literature-based co-seminar (2021-2022)
- A new laboratory course and literature-based co-seminar focused on giving students an opportunity to carry out authentic research in a course-setting. The topic focuses on engineering RNA aptamers.
BCHM 1020: A Path to Success: Introduction to the Biochemistry Major (2021)
- The goals of this course are to help first year students navigate their first year in college and develop the skills they need to succeed in the Biochemistry major.
CHEM 1400: Foundations of Chemistry (2015-2016)
- The goals of this course are to improve critical thinking and reasoning, emphasize core concepts in chemistry, and foster a sense of community and identity as a chemistry and/or biochemistry major. The curriculum and design were motivated by research on teaching and learning that indicates student develop deeper understandings and higher-level critical thinking skills when they are actively engaged, challenged to construct explanations, and taught to explain their reasoning.

Course Improvement

Over the course of four years (2007-2011), Amy transformed the course structure, pedagogy, and curriculum of an upper-division Physical Chemistry class (CHEM 4411). She transformed the learning environment by developing group break-out sessions, hands-on tutorials, and Clicker questions to engage students as active learners. These reforms were sustained and adopted by faculty that taught the course in subsequent years.

Teaching Experience

In 2018 and 2019, Kelsie Anson developed a case study with two other graduate students in metabolic engineering for Dr. Jeffery Cameron's Metabolic Pathways and Human Disease course. This case study uses research from Dr. Shelley Copley's lab (MCDB, CIRES) to try to create better bacteria to help break down toxic waste in the environment and to acquaint students with data analysis, collaboration, and experimental design.

Sarah McQuate and Liz Specht also both co-taught classes for CU undergraduate students in the spring of 2016. Sarah co-taught Science in the Public Sphere with Dr. Lonni Pearce through the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, and Liz guest lectured for a brand new course taught by Dr. Dan Feldheim called Chemistry of Global Health.

Center for Teaching and Learning

Erin was the Department of Biochemistry's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Lead from May 2020 - May 2021. In this role, she helped to organize training for General Chemistry TAs and hosted two training workshops/panels. Erin also created a Department of Biochemistry TA Materials Repository including prep materials, exam/quiz/homework questions and their keys, and specific advice on grading. In conjunction with this repository, she also connected trainees that had taught the course in prior years to trainees currently teaching the course, all with the intention to make the transition to teaching easier and to maintain department knowledge in a central public location. Erin also connected current trainees and TAs to teaching and professional development workshops and helped them progress toward skills certificates offered through the CTL. Throughout her time at CU - but focused during her time as a CTL Lead - she has organized and taught numerous teaching workshops, many of which focus specifically on diversity and inclusion in communities and in the classroom.

Kelsie Anson also served as the departmental lead for the Graduate Teacher Program within the CTL. She helped to train incoming TAs, leads workshops on tough topics in the classroom, and built connections between students and faculty to facilitate meaningful graduate teaching experiences.

Department Resources

Erin collected resources demonstrating that GRE scores are a poor measure of potential graduate student success and presented the case to faculty in the Department of Biochemistry. The faculty agreed and removed the GRE requirement from graduate applications in Fall 2020.

Erin compiled successful NSF and NIH pre-doctoral fellowship applications and put them on Biochemistry Resources Drive. These will hopefully help students write successful fellowship applications in the future. Erin has also contributed documents to the Drive with advice about the written and oral qualifying exams and about questions to ask yourself and the PI before choosing a thesis lab. These documents were made (and are still added to yearly) with other graduate students in the department.

P2P Mentoring

Erin co-founded and still sits on the committee for the Department of Biochemistry's Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Mentoring Program which primarily aims to help first-year graduate students with their First-Year classwork, teaching responsibilities, and lab rotations by pairing first-year students with graduate students further along in the biochemistry graduate program. After lots of positive feedback, P2P has expanded to help graduate students further in the program by creating a Biochemistry Alumni Network and hosting networking events.

CU Science Discovery

Palmer Lab members have worked with high school students through the CU Science Discovery program. In 2016 and 2017, Kelsie taught middle school summar camps on how science is used to solve crimes. In 2015, Esther, Ali, Lynn, and Yu hosted four high school students in the lab for summer research projects. These students completed four-week research projects involving cell culture, bacterial infections, and fluorescence microscopy. Liz and Eugenia also taught Teen Café workshops through CU Science Discovery. Eugenia taught about using microscopes to visualize the host/pathogen interface and Liz taught about the potential of bioengineering to develop new technologies. Additionally, in 2015, Sarah and Liz co-taught two CU Science Discovery Biotechnology summer courses. These courses included a heavy lab component, independent projects that encouraged students to think critically about current relevant STEM topics, a visit to a local biotech company, and a career panel.

LHS SMART Team

Erin volunteers as a graduate student mentor to the Longmont High School Students Modeling A Research Topic (SMART) Team, an afterschool club for high school students in the district aimed at helping students understand the relationship between structure and function of biomolecules like proteins. Students model biomolecules, write abstracts, compile a poster, and present their posters to the public (either locally or at international conferences).

High School Students

The Palmer Lab is involved in the community and has hosted several high school students from Boulder and Fairview Highschools for research experiences. Kylie Berg, a student part of the Fairview Highschool Science Research Seminar, was awarded first place at the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair, and earned a Biophysical Society Award for her research on zinc in breast cancer cells!

SMART Mentorship

The Palmer Lab has hosted multiple undergraduate research students through the Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training (SMART) program. Students in this program work on an independent research project in the lab of their choice for ten weeks during the summer. SMART students in the Palmer Lab spend their summers as full members of the lab, often becoming experts on their projects, microscopy, and data analysis. Many of the SMART students in the lab have gone on to graduate school.

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