Stephen Ducharme ( He/Him/His )

Professor

University Of Nebraska

Physics & Astronomy

Life Sciences Focus

The majority of students in the class have a health science focus, along with other students of life and biosciences.

Education Research and Pedagogy Expertise

I have been using a number of research-based instructional techniques, as specified above under "Pedagogical Methods Used." I also have some experience training or mentoring other faculty, lecturers, and TAs on the use of these methods. At UNL, we are fortunate to have about two dozen STEM faculty who specialize in STEM education research, and who help inform and train the rest of us.

Describe the courses that you teach for life sciences students

I teach an honors section up to 30 students as part of a large two-semester IPLS course. The other sections serve approximately 400 students. We have a mostly-flipped class with much of class time spend on group exercises and group or whole-class discussions.

What is your approach to teaching physics for life science students?

Besides the using student-centered methods of instruction, as noted above, I am working to integrate more bioscience and life science content into the course. The the text (Introduction to Biological Physics for the Health and Life Sciences by Franklin, et al.) and course content do have a substantial amount of such relevant content, but my long-term goal is to teach the physics much more from the point of view of life sciences.