Background: Calls by presidents and legislators to raise the U.S. college graduation rate to 60% by 2025 have required educational institutions to find ways to increase accessibility and quality while simultaneously reducing costs (Bautsch, 2018; Smith, 2017). Private foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are getting involved...
In this dissertation I explore the Arms representation and activities for teaching quantum mechanics invented at Oregon State University. In the Arms representation students embody quantum states. The Arms activities are presented as an exemplar of the unique physics classroom culture of the upper-division Paradigms in Physics program. In the...
Engineering education research has led to a greater understanding of the gap in preparedness of students for the engineering industry. Multiple studies comparing the workplace and academic contexts and the participants in those contexts (i.e., students, faculty, and engineering practitioners) have emphasized similarities and differences between the two contexts by...
The focus of this thesis is to design, characterize, and apply novel computational methods and molecular systems to interrogate heterogeneous human gut microbiome-related phenomena. In Chapter 2, I design, implement, and characterize a method for embedding co-occurrence patterns derived from massive 16s amplicon datasets. I use this method to 1....
Sudden Oak Death (SOD) is a forest disease caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, and infects trees in the Western United States and Europe. This generalist pathogen can infect over 130 species of plants, and causes rapid mortality in tree species in the Fagaceae. Sexual reproduction is thought to...