SUNY Old Westbury Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Dr. Christos Noutsos was recently selected by the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) Network to become a Fellow. The fellowship is granted to academics who are committed to utilizing evidence-based methods for improving student learning in their courses.
"It's been exciting incorporating active learning projects in my Plant Biology classes, including research projects with our students enriching plant-related pages on Wikipedia, and improving corn genome annotations," said Dr. Noutsos. "The funding, resources, and support from this fellowship will help me continue to hone best practices in teaching and assessing in our department's courses."
PALM is funded by the National Science Foundation and addresses recommendations put forward by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and NSF in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education. Fellows are provided funds to visit, observe, and work with a PALM mentor. Dr. Noutsos will be working with Dr. Jeremy Hsu from Chapman University in California to create modules that would help students understand Plant Diversity using Active learning approaches.
Dr. Noutsos, a resident of East Northport, New York, earned his Ph.D. in Evolutionary Genomics at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding in Cologne, Germany and his M.S. in Bioinformatics in Wageningen University & Research in Wageningen, the Netherlands. His research has been published in several publications and was Associate Editor for Current Plant Biology journal. Dr. Noutsos serves currently as a committee member for the American Society of Plant Biologists.