American invasion

Thanks to the support of iEarth, bioCEED, and HK-Dir INTPART funds, bioCEED and iEarth collaborated to host three visiting researchers from the US in July and August. Alyssa Olson (University of Minnesota) visited for over a month and took part in the sixth course offering of the Plant Functional Traits Course in Aurland, Norway. Alyssa’s role in the course was to both assess the course itself, as part of work initiated with PFTC3 in Peru in 2017, and to lead a Science-Communication Module with the other course participants. Sarah Hammarlund (also of the University of Minnesota) was supported by an iEarth mini-grant to investigate Sense of Belonging in introductory-STEM courses, including GEO, and Robin Costello (Auburn University) was supported by a bioCEED mini-grant to lead the analysis of recently collected data on test anxiety in introductory-STEM courses at UiB. Mirjam Glessmer of iEarth and GFI was key to this working group, as we conducted qualitative data analysis, presented our findings at the STEM Education Research mini-symposium and bioBERG, and planned at least one manuscripit from our findings. And of course we ensured our visitors experienced the best of Norway—Bergen’s mountains, taco friday, and lots of fjord-swimming.