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SPUR+ 

Grant Recipients by Year

2022

• Resources to Promote the Inclusion of Spanish-speaking Faculty and Students, developed by Joan Roque, University of Puerto Rico - Cayey and Santiago Toledo, American University. The team plans to work with bilingual students to translate and evaluate materials in the classroom, and participate in focus groups to provide feedback regarding the quality of the translation.
• Prompts to Promote Teamwork in the Classroom, developed by Gifty Blankson, Maryville University, Patrick Cafferty, Emory University, and Andri Smith, Quinnipiac University. The team plans to introduce written or oral teamwork prompts into POGIL activities at the midpoint of human physiology, organic chemistry, and introductory chemistry courses, and measuring student teamwork behavior using the ELIPSS analytic teamwork rubric.
 

2021

  • POGIL Activities for Introductory Microeconomics developed by Neal MacDougall, Professor of Agribusiness at California Polytechnic State University and Mare Sullivan, Adjunct faculty, Science Education, Seattle Pacific University. The team plans to create and classroom-test 21+ new single-concept POGIL mini-activities that will allow students to develop the basic concepts of an Introductory Micro-Economics course (with agricultural goods as examples).

2020

  • POGIL Activities for Introductory Art: Elements of Art, developed by Mare Sullivan, Adjunct faculty, Science Education, Seattle Pacific University and Lori Stanton, Science teacher, Canyon Park Middle School, Bothell, WA.  The team plans to create and classroom-test 15 new POGIL activities that will allow students to develop the basic concepts of the elements of art. 

2019

  • POGIL for Psychology, developed by Jill Rinzel, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha, and Jessi Hill, Associate Professor of Psychology, Utah Valley University. Jill and Jessi are interested in expanding POGIL to the psychological sciences and will be creating activities for introductory psychology courses. In the future, they hope to build beyond introductory psychology into cognitive psychology.
  • ExPo-POGIL: Exploring Polymers in the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum Through POGIL Laboratory Experiences, developed by Andrea Van Duzor, Professor of Chemical Education, Chicago State University; Kristy Mardis, Professor of Computational Physical Chemistry, Chicago State University; and Mary Twist van Opstal, Chemistry Instructor/Chemistry Education, Harper College. With the 2015 revision to the undergraduate guidelines for approved chemistry programs, the American Chemical Society highlighted the need to improve undergraduate education in polymer science. To help meet this need, Chicago State University and Harper College plan to collaborate to create a new set of introductory and upper-level polymer POGIL laboratory experiments. 

2018

  • POGIL Physical Science Activities Designed to Support the NGSS, led by Mare Sullivan, Adjunct Faculty in Science Education at Seattle Pacific University; and, Amy Steele, Middle School Science Teacher at Cornerstone Christian Academy. The team plans to create a collection of twelve new POGIL activities for middle school physical science, to specifically address NGSS standards. 

2017

  • Middle School Earth and Life Science POGILs, led by Lori Stanton, a master teacher with experience as a high school and middle school science teacher; and, Amy Steele, a middle school science teacher at Cornerstone Christian Academy. This team, with Mare Sullivan as a consultant, has developed 22 activities that have been beta tested in middle school classrooms. The activities have been designed to meet specific Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and have undergone the POGIL activity feedback and endorsement process and will be published soon by Flinn Scientific. 
  • Environmental Science Activity Cultivation (ESAC), led by Caryl Fish, Professor of Interdisciplinary Science and Environmental Chemistry at Saint Vincent College; and, Daniel King, Associate Professor of Environmental Chemistry at Drexel University. The team will be meeting several times throughout 2018, including during the POGIL Northeast Regional Meeting, to catalogue existing college level environmental science activities, determine the stage of development for each, while also identifying any gaps in content coverage. Once the identification phase is complete, a team of environmental science faculty will move the collection forward by writing, reviewing, and classroom testing the activities.

2016

  • Congratulations to Ashley Mahoney from Bethel University, and Rob Whitnell from Guilford College, for receiving the 2016 SPUR+ Grant for their proposal to develop lab activities: SPIRAL: Strengthening the use of Process, Inquiry, Reflection and Application in the Laboratory.

Examples of Projects Funded by the Original SPUR Grant Program

The primary difference between SPUR and SPUR+ is the focus on collaboration, although, as you can see from the original SPUR funded projects below, working together is so often a natural part of the POGIL community’s approach.

  • Activity Development Projects: High School Biology Activity Book; POGIL Activities for Advanced Inorganic Chemistry; PGP - POGIL GOB Project; Creating a POGIL workbook for high school chemistry; POGIL Methods to Improve and Assess Concepts of the Mole.
  • Projects as Springboards to Successful Grant Funding: POGIL-ENVY: POGIL Activities for Environmental Chemistry; POGIL-PCL.
  • Workshop and Professional Development Projects: Inaugural Conference of POGIL Northwest Regional Network; SuperLab Workshop: Lab Workshop & Facilitators Training; Development of a peer coaching network.