Michele Shuster

Michele Shuster, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the biology department at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning, studying introductory biology, microbiology, and cancer biology classes at the undergraduate level, as well as working on several K-12 science education programs. Michele is an active participant in programs that provide mentoring in scientific teaching to postdoctoral fellows, preparing the next...See more

Michele Shuster, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the biology department at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning, studying introductory biology, microbiology, and cancer biology classes at the undergraduate level, as well as working on several K-12 science education programs. Michele is an active participant in programs that provide mentoring in scientific teaching to postdoctoral fellows, preparing the next generation of undergraduate educators. She is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including a the Westhafer award for Teaching Excellence at NMSU. Michele received her Ph.D. from the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University School of Medicine, where she studied meiotic chromosome segregation in yeast. Janet Vigna, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the biology department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She is a science education specialist in the Integrated Science Program, training and mentoring K-12 science teachers. Janet has 18 years of undergraduate teaching experience, with a special interest in effectively teaching biology to nonmajors. She has recently been recognized with the GVSU Outstanding Teacher Award. Her scholarly interests include biology curriculum development, the effective use of digital media in science education, and research on the effects of biological pesticides on amphibian communities.She received her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Iowa. Matthew Tontonoz has been a development editor for textbooks in introductory biology, cell biology, biochemistry, evolution, and environmental science. After a brief stint in medical school in California, he realized he was better suited to saving sentences than saving lives. He received his B.A. in biology from Wesleyan University and his M.A. in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently staff science writer at the Cancer Research Institute, where he covers advances in cancer immunology and blogs about the history of medicine. Gunjan Sinha has been writing about science for over a decade. Her articles have been published in Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Scientific American, and several other magazines and journals. She holds a graduate degree in molecular genetics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and a graduate degree in journalism from New York University. She currently works as a freelance science journalist and lives in Berlin, Germany. See less