Stephanie Berg Email and Phone Number

I received the National Science Foundations STEM Education Individual Postdoctoral Research Fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Mariel Pfeifer, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Mississippi. Under this fellowship, I am investigating the ways in which science doctoral students who identify as disabled or as having a disability make sense of their identities in science. This work is meant to better understand what supports faculty mentors and departments can enact to sustain disabled students throughout their doctoral training

In my dissertation research, I explored 1) how undergraduate and graduate chemistry students made sense of chemical data to form claims and 2) how a simulated peer review could be used as a classroom activity to help undergraduate students develop their competencies in science practices. I conducted semi-structured interviews in both remote and in-person settings, and gained experience in using different qualitative methods to make sense of the interview data.

I was one of the two undergraduate lab teaching assistants for the University of Minnesota, Morris' Introduction to Research class

My current research was initially funded by the University of Minnesota's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. My task was to redesign one of the current General Chemistry laboratories to become more sustainable and to focus on Green Chemistry. One of the main labs in the curriculum is a simple titration, so my goal was to make it green by using a natural indicator found in hibiscus in place of the synthetic indicator, phenolphthalein. By doing this, the University of Minnesota Morris would have another Green Chemistry lab and will become even more sustainable by using flowers that are grown on campus. However, the hibiscus extract did not behave like we had expected from what much of the primary literature has said. Now, we are investigating the physical properties of the extract to see why it behaves the way it does.

I am a student worker for the Center for Small Towns where I am working on a project partially funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies from the University of Minnesota system. My project has the broad theme of food sovereignty, and I assist in helping to organize a speaker coming to the University of Minnesota, Morris campus and also in planning a field trip to learn more about how food sovereignty affects the Native American people of Minnesota and the surrounding area.

This is a Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) program funded by the National Science Foundation. The CiDER REU is focused on discipline-based educational research, mostly physics, biology, mathematics, and chemistry. My particular project, under the advisement of Dr. James Nyachwaya, is focused on observing how General Chemistry students are able to visualize chemical reactions and different phases of matter on the particulate level.

I received a paid undergraduate research position with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute summer program at the University of Minnesota, Morris. My research, under the guidance of Dr. Abbey Fischer, focused on creating a new undergraduate General Chemistry laboratory that focused on the colligative properties of water, specifically the freezing point depression used to melt ice on Minnesota roadways. The ice melting methods included using salt solutions, carbohydrate solutions, and also using substitutes for agricultural waste. The laboratory that I designed was in use at the University of Wisconsin - Barron County in Dr. Abbey Fischer's classes.