Dr Jack Eichler's focus of scholarly activity lies in developing, implementing, and assessing more engaging learning environments for large enrollment general chemistry courses. He was the principal investigator on an NSF Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES) project that developed, implemented, and disseminated a series of problem-based case studies in our two-year general chemistry/organic chemistry sequence, and an NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project in which adapted the project's problem-based studies to be used as in-class activities for flipped classroom modules. A related research study demonstrated that implementing 4-6 flipped classroom modules in one quarter of general chemistry significantly increased the amount of active learning that takes place in lecture, and students participating in the flipped classroom modules performed better in the course than students in traditional lectures (Eichler and Peeples, 2016, Chemical Education Research and Practice). A follow-up study that utilized a randomized controlled trial experiment indicates the online learning environment led to most of the performance gains in a model flipped classroom study group (Casselman, Atit, Eichler, et al., 2020, Journal of Chemical Education). Dr. Eichler's current work focuses on how the flipped classroom can be leveraged to facilitate deeper conceptual understanding of core chemistry concepts (Wu, Eichler, Yezierski, et al., 2021, Chemistry Education Research and Practice; Eichler, 2022, Journal of Chemical Education).

Dr. Cathy Lussier is an Assistant Professor of Teaching with the Graduate School of Education (GSOE) at University of California, Riverside (UCR). She received a Master’s degree in Psychology from California State University, Fullerton and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from UCR. Her dissertation focused on stress and its impact on memory and cognition. In the past, she has been the director of a two U.S. Dept of Education, Institute of Education Sciences grants (one focused on problem-solving interventions using working memory in mathematics, the other on literacy and cognition for Spanish-speaking English Learners). Prior to that, she co-directed The Copernicus Project, a U.S. Department of Education, Office of Post-Secondary Education five-year grant aimed at STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teacher development and making science more accessible to underrepresented high school and community college students. Currently, she teaches courses in cognition and learning, human development, language development, and STEM curriculum development, with occasional forays into education policy history and curriculum training for the teacher development program. In her spare time, she is also the co-principal investigator of the NSF Noyce Scholars program and the faculty team leader for the NASA Minority Education Institute (NASA MEI). Additionally, she has worked for several years with her colleagues at NASA-JPL to provide K-12 student and STEM training and teacher development workshops throughout southern California. Also, she is a California native, and loves traveling, cooking, and coffee (but not necessarily in that order). 

Mrs. Leslie Bushong is an alumna of UC Riverside. She earned her multiple-subject teaching credential at UC Irvine. Since her return to UC Riverside in 1997, she has continued her passion for teacher education. During her tenure as the professional academic advisor for UCR's Mathematics Department, she created and developed advising resources and techniques to prepare undergraduate mathematics students interested in teaching mathematics.  As a former academic advisor in the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and classroom teacher, Leslie has served as the founding staff director for UCR-SMI since the program's inception in 2006.  She is prepared and well-versed to serve as the to advise and prepare science and mathematics pre-service teacher candidates for their future careers in teaching.