A Guide to Course-based Undergraduate Research

Gabriela Weaver serves as Special Assistant to the Provost for Educational Initiatives at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Previously, her role was Vice Provost for Faculty Development, and director of the Institute for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development (TEFD). Prior to coming to UMass, she served as professor of chemistry and science education and the Jerry and Rosie Semler Director of the Discovery Learning Research Center at Purdue University. In 2019, she was awarded a Fellowship with the American Council of Education which she carried out at Boston University. In 2012, she was elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for distinguished contributions to transforming science education at the undergraduate level. She has been a co-author on two chemistry textbooks, and the 2015 book Transforming Institutions: Undergraduate STEM Education for the 21st Century, as well as author of numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. From 2004-2012, she served as director of the NSF-funded multi-institutional CASPiE project (Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education) dedicated to involving first- and second-year undergraduate students in research experiences. She was a member of the convening committee for the NASEM workshop on Integrating Discovery-Based Research into the Undergraduate Curriculum and a co-author on the resulting report by the same name (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015). Her research interests include educational practices that increase student success and the institutionalization of such practices through the transformation of cultures and processes in higher education. She earned a B.S. degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in chemical physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.