IMPACT

Join us on October 15 for a special public lecture by Nathaniel Whitaker, a distinguished professor and head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMass Amherst.

Faculty, staff and graduate students from the College of Science won nine awards at University Day, the celebratory kickoff to the academic year featuring an annual awards ceremony. These awards highlight excellence in teaching, advising, research and diversity advocacy, showing the College as a leader across the university.

Phyisics student Diego Menendez will begin classes for his final year at Oregon State during Hispanic Heritage Month 2024, right after his last LSAMP bridges experience as a program mentor. When asked what Hispanic Heritage Month means to him, he said, “I feel like during that month and other identity-based celebration months, people are just so proud of where they come from, who they are, and their lineage, their people, their families. I love that. I'm a very proud Cuban all the time.”

For five days, the students participated in the Ignite inSTEM summer camp, a groundbreaking initiative to diversify the biomedical workforce by engaging underrepresented youth in hands-on science for the first time and improving their retention in STEM.

The College of Science proudly announces that Gabs James, associate director of student engagement, has been awarded the Hattie Redmond Feminist of Achievement award.

When an autistic high-school student meets an autistic science mentor, a whole new world of possibilities opens. When a shy high-school student is encouraged to embrace curiosity and ask questions, their path to college gets easier to navigate. And when an underrepresented high-school student is given a scholarship to attend a microbiology STEM camp, it can change their world.

The College of Science gathered on Feb. 29 to recognize and celebrate our high achieving faculty and staff at the 2024 Combined Awards Ceremony.

The following faculty and staff received awards in the categories of Inclusive Excellence, Administration, Service and Performance.

Congratulations to all the awardees!

As children, most of us were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Quipping dreams of ballerinas, firefighters, doctors or mythical characters — how many of us actually pursued them? Camrie Smith always said she wanted to work with animals. And it stuck.

Earlier this fall, more than 6,000 people gathered for the nation’s largest STEM diversity event of the year, the 2023 National Diversity in STEM (NDiSTEM) conference, hosted in Portland, Oregon.

The Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics will present “Women Leaders in STEM: Challenges and Rewards” on Wednesday, Dec. 13. The event is partially funded by the College of Science’s Gender Equity Leadership Fund, awarded to Biochemistry and Biophysics Head Elisar Barbar in 2023 to implement projects for the advancement of women faculty and those assigned female at birth in the College.

Teaching faculty in the College of Science working to increase access, equity and inclusion in STEM education can create change by collaborating with a supportive community. The the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence grant creates a resource for enhancing STEM pedagogy.

Shaping challenges into opportunities is what chemistry Ph.D. student Abdikani Omar Farah has done nearly all of his life. After growing up in East Africa and experiencing firsthand what it meant to lack access to medicine, Farah now wants to use his career to fill this drug scarcity and give back to his communities.