In 2019, Kathleen Jeffery (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Chemistry Education) attended the 2019 Gordon Research Conference for Visualization in Science and Education. The conference hosts a Visionary Grant competition, supported by a generous grant from NASA, to provide “seed funding” to multidisciplinary research teams to enable the submission of a full research proposal to an appropriate grant agency.
Kathleen formed a team with Caleb Trujillo (Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington – Bothell), Kevin Wee (Graduate Student, Chemistry Education, Purdue University), and Huyen Nguyen (Graduate Student, Computer Science, Texas Tech University) to propose a project entitled ‘Visualizing Qualitative Data for Science and Education’. They argue that the lack of integration between qualitative research and data visualization, as well as the inherent difficulty in presenting qualitative data, has led to missed opportunities in qualitative research and has left rich qualitative data overlooked in data visualization frameworks. The project was selected and received approximately $10,000 to characterize current trends in the visualization of qualitative data and to explore potential methods for visualizing qualitative data.
Kathleen is currently working on several multi-institutional NSF-funded projects with Dr. Christopher Bauer, including, primarily, the assessment of the longitudinal impact of students’ participation in PLTL on their retention of chemistry knowledge (NSF #1712230); and the development and evaluation of a service learning-focused chemistry curriculum (NSF #1830120).
She is also working on several other projects in various stages of completion, including: the use of expert research to inform biochemistry curriculum development; evaluation of data presentation in chemistry education scholarship; development and evaluation of a graduate student teaching assistant training course; and identifying multiple literacies in science education.
When she is not working, Kathleen enjoys hiking, nature photography, and reading.
