Postdoctoral Researcher

My life story begins when my parents met in prison. Don’t worry though: they both worked there! My father was a warden for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and, because of his job, I’ve always had a unique perspective on human behavior. My desire to understand people led me to study psychology. During my Ph.D. education, I also had several wonderful opportunities to teach undergraduates, and I discovered a true passion for finding ways to improve higher education. In fact, I found myself looking for an opportunity to shift into conducting educational research full time, which is what led me to the RE3ACH lab. As one of Lisa's postdocs, I'm a part of FLAMEnet—the Factor influence Learning, Attitudes, and Mindsets in Education network. As a group, we bring together STEM instructors, psychologists, and education researchers from diverse institutions to investigate the noncognitive factors (those things not related to intelligence or the content itself) that improve instructor and student outcomes in undergraduate education. I am particular interested in how college STEM students define “success” and “failure” in academic contexts and in how their responses to challenges and failures influences their academic outcomes. You can learn more about this and other research projects on my personal website here. In my free time, I pursue a wide range of geeky interests. I love Jane Austen, sci-fi/fantasy, board games, and I play handbells. My favorite obsession hobby is rounding up my wonderful friends to play escape rooms. (My record for escapes is currently 28-4!)

I was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, where I earned my B.Sc. with Honors in Biology, minoring in Environmental Studies at York University. At the end of my undergrad, considering a career as a conservation manager of some sort, I sought out my M.Sc. with Dr. Sapna Sharma, examining the impacts of projected climate change on the distributions of cisco, an important forage prey fish. Though becoming an ecological modeler was a lot of fun, I found my passion for education research, mentoring, and working with teachers and students. Two weeks after defending my M.Sc., I packed up and moved south to work on my doctorate with Dr. Beth Schussler in science education research, investigating teaching anxiety, research anxiety, and coping in Biology Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). Currently, I work as a postdoctoral research associate with Dr. Lisa Corwin at the University of Colorado, Boulder, investigating the barriers faced and supports needed for community college faculty to pursue educational research. I am also an emerging independent consultant, where I am building a business to evaluate STEM programs for graduate and undergraduate students. Outside the lab, you can find Miranda volunteering with her church community, trying out new international recipes, or trying to keep up with her ever-moving toddler.

PhD student

At the onset of my academic career, my goal was to become a plant biologist. However, after working as a teaching assistant I realized how much I enjoyed pedagogy. Thus, I transitioned from a molecular biologist to a DBER researcher where I now get to investigate student-centered learning approaches in STEM. My dissertation involves investigating the impact of community-engaged (CE) CUREs on student's scientific civic engagement. This led to designing and teaching my own CE CURE as part of the Boulder Apple Tree Project and creating a validated survey that measures student's scientific civic engagement. I am particularly interested in using my graduate training in psychometrics. mixed-methods and phenomenology in the realm of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (IDEA). This work would entail retaining under-served STEM students, designing participatory action research projects in STEM, and building community-institution relationships. In my spare time, I love to cook, travel and indulge in the rich delicacies that Denver has to offer. And like a lot of folks during the pandemic, I have amassed a growing collection of 40+ houseplants.

Graduate Student

With a background in environmental social science and communication, I am passionate about local practices and teaching that inspires collaborative environmental action and connects diverse stakeholders at individual, local and regional scales. I have had 3+ years of experience in environmental science and biology education data management, where I conducted and converted qualitative interviews and open responses into quantitative measures and analysis. I have had 10 years of communication, outreach and teaching in environmental science, ecology and the arts, spanning ages 2 to 70 years old. Currently I an Environmental Social Science Consultant at the Nature Conservancy, an Adjunct Faculty at CU for the Learning Assistant Program, and the Research and Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Sustainable Landscapes and Communities out of CU Boulder.

Postdoctoral Researcher

With a background in molecular cell biology and biology education research, I am particularly interested in promoting evidence-based educational strategies that help students persist in their STEM studies and careers. As a first-generation college student from a low-income household, I hope to make education more inclusive and equitable. My ultimate goal is for my life’s work to contribute to the creation of a more knowledgeable, thoughtful, and diverse population of students that can move our society toward a better future. Currently, I am the Director of Content for Codon Learning, an education technology startup. We are developing a STEM courseware platform that aims to scale inclusive, evidence-based teaching practices. In this role I apply what I have learned from my personal experiences and my studies of biology and education to ensure that research-backed approaches, equity, and inclusion are at the forefront of the platform we design and content we create.

PhD Student, Demming-Adams Lab, CU Boulder

I am a Ph.D. student in the Demmig-Adams and Adams lab at CU, and I study how plant anatomy and physiology work together to support photosynthesis under different environmental conditions. Still, science education is a topic close to my heart. Before I decided to pursue a Ph.D. I worked as a high school science teacher, and I absolutely loved it! I hope to return to the secondary classroom after graduation. I am thankful to be an unofficial member of the RE3ACH Lab so that I can stay up to date on the latest research that supports students and collaborate with a team of wonderful scientists and educators. Outside of research and the classroom, I love riding horses, gardening, and relaxing with my cats.

My love of science began with identifying plants in the backcountry of the wild west. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin Madison with my B.S. in Botany, Environmental Science, and Conservation Biology, I scouted for native plant populations across the west on teams with the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and the botanic gardens in California and Utah. While I love the backcountry, folks kept asking me about the plants growing in the cities and I eventually turned my attention to urban ecology. I finished my PhD here at the University of Colorado Boulder studying our urban trees in 2022. During this degree is when I found my love of teaching field courses and place-based education research. I worked with members of the REACH lab to design a Course Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) focused on preservation of heritage urban apple trees. As a postdoctoral researcher in the REACH lab, I am continuing development of place-based curricula to engage undergraduates in research in partnership with instructors from community colleges and institutions primarily enrolling underserved populations. Our project is called A Power of Place Learning Experience & Research Network (APPLE R Net) to Support Community College Student Success and Civic Engagement. I will be investigating how students’ sense of belonging to their communities, scientific civic engagement, and intent to persist in the sciences may be impacted after their participation in a CURE.

I love geology. I love art and I love teaching . The intersection of these elements defines the core of who I am as a geologist and discipline-based education researcher. I grew up in India and completed my B.Sc. (Honours) in Geology and M.Sc. (Honours) in Applied Geology from Jadavpur University in Kolkata. I started teaching when I was an undergrad and I loved interacting with students. During my graduate school, I cooked rocks in the lab. In more scientific terms, I used high-pressure temperature experiments in the lab to simulate conditions in the earth’s interior to understand the formation of continents. I loved working in the lab, but I really missed teaching and interacting with students. During this time, I continued to volunteer at various outreach events, STEM festivals and STEM Camps. I also worked at the Rice Center of Academic and Professional communication to pursue my interest in science writing and communication. In the last year of grad school, I took a class in teaching and pedagogy, and it opened my eyes to the world of education research. After I graduated from Rice with a Ph.D. in Earth, Environment and Planetary Sciences in 2019, I went to New Zealand to pursue another PhD. Degree in GeoEducation. During this time, I continued my work in teaching and outreach through professional development with teachers, designing curricula to teach about volcanoes both in K-12 setting and for undergraduate education. I also had the privilege of working with Indigenous communities in Aotearoa NZ to co-design educational resources with them. The combination of my research and teaching experiences has led me to get more excited about how we teach geology in the Anthropocene. My current research at CU Boulder is focused on understanding experiences of incoming graduate students with an emphasis on program design and evaluation of the FiredUp program I am always excited about innovative ways to teach geology to students of different age groups and am open for collaborations across disciplines to support student learning.

Email: Sriparna.saha@colorado.edu

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthwhisperer_20/