Stem Cells and Social Justice

Author(s):
Chamany, Katayoun. Associate Professor of Biology, Department of Natural Sciences and Math; Balinsky, Warren. Associate Professor of Health Services Management; Pettinger, Michael. Assistant Professor, Religious Studies and Literature; Rubin, Lisa, Assistant Professor of Health Psychology and Gender Studies; Snitow, Ann, Associate Professor of Literature and Gender Studies, Director of Gender Studies, Wargaski, Julia, Assistant Professor of Communication Design, The New School, New York, NY.; Newstetter, Wendy, Director of Learning Sciences, Georgia Tech University, and Asch, Adrienne, Director of the Center for Ethics, Yeshiva University

A 2012 SENCER Model

Note: This model has been expanded, modularized, and used on multiple campuses. Please visit this page to access all components of the curriculum including syllabi, teaching and learning resources, and video and infographics. 

SENCER Model Course LogoThis interdisciplinary non-majors course provides a balanced view of the biological, ethical, legal and social justice dimensions of stem cell research. Readings span feminist, religious, and disability rights perspectives and promote and expansive world view. Info graphics serve as learning tools to aid students in their temporal and spatial understanding of stem cell biology as well as trace the history of stem cell-related technologies and policies that govern this area of research. A student-centered learning approach using role-play and case studies threads the course curriculum and asks students to use evidence to consider the benefits, risks, and trade-offs involved in social policy-making surrounding the use of human bodies, embryos, eggs, and cells in research. Students also generate outreach projects using print, audio, and video media to raise awareness and understanding of stem cell research and its implications for society. Student learning is measured using authentic and performative assessment

Instructor’s Goals

  1. To develop modules on stem cell research that can be used across the liberal arts curriculum by faculty spanning a diverse range of disciplines such that faculty and students see the subject as interdisciplinary and students no longer shy away from the natural sciences and see the discipline as relevant to their academic interests and personal responsibilities.
  2. To develop textual and visual content for curricular modules that integrate cell biology and the social science perspectives of stem cell research
  3. To identify and interrogate the normative assumptions about the practices and policies of biomedical research: that bodies can serve as sites of experimentation or biological resources; that only healthy people can participate in society and contribute to the public good; and that science and technology are the best approaches to solving social problems.
  4. To promote the social justice mission in social policy making in two ways: procedural justice, which asks who participates in the practice and policing of in stem cell research at the lab bench or with regard to human subjects; and distributive justice, which asks who benefits from the knowledge and applications of stem cell research.

Student Learning Objectives
Given the breadth and depth of this course, our team defined a set of learning outcomes that we have distilled down to five major categories that include concepts, principles and skills.

  1. Differentiate the various methods of developing stem cell lines and the implications for research and therapy. (biology, scientific method, disease and therapy)
  2. Categorize and summarize evidence-based arguments for and against the liberalization of hESC and the ways in which policy has been shaped by these competing positions. (policy & advocacy)
  3. Recognize the dominant narrative in which scientific research is positioned as progress and question the benefits and dangers associated with SCR as compared to other approaches used to promote social good. (ethical, feminist, disability rights, and religious perspectives)
  4. Recognize and correct basic errors in representations of the scientific, ethical, and social dimensions of stem cell research (communication; hype vs hope)
  5. Trace the history of: cell research; human subjects research; the forms of compensation that have been used in the past to balance the risks and benefits of research participation; and the formation of new regulatory structures designed to provide oversight of emerging practices.(history)

Learning outcome 1 above is focused on biology and can be broken down in more detail

  1. Explain the role of various molecules and structures in the cell that regulate responses to environmental signals, and recognize macro and micro scale effects.
  2. Identify the unique characteristics of a stem cell.
  3. Gain familiarity with the scientific method by designing an experiment using planaria.
  4. Identify natural and artificial sources of stem cells and their role in nature and research
  5. Recognize that the different protocols used to obtain stem cells influence differentiation and therapeutic potential (adult, menstrual blood, cord blood, SCNT, parthenotes, PGD, cybrids, iPS)
  6. Articulate the benefits and drawbacks of each method’s potential in term of differentiation and contributions to basic scientific research and/or therapy.

Linking Science and Social Issues

Cell structures, cell cycle, mitosis, cancer, cell line registries, and cell signaling meiosis, cloning,parthenotes, cell cycle, mitochondrial vs. nuclear genomes, cell signaling, transcription, nuclear reprogramming are taught through:

The History of Cell Culture: Tracing cell culture back to the establishment of the HeLa cell line, and more recently with examples of people and cells being viewed as commodities, and the debates surrounding Public vs. Private biobanking as they relate to long standing issues around race, class and gender.

Clones, Chimeras, and Cybrids: Tracing the history through the airing of the National Academy of Sciences public meeting in 2001 on Human Cloning, and the UK’s decision to license and permit cybrid construction for embryonic stem cell research. Cases involving rogue scientists and others who promote cloning for reproductive purposes: /Raelians and Zavos presentations.

Cell differentiation, genetic engineering, adult stem cell niches, cell signaling, nuclear reprogramming, mi-RNA biology, viral vector technology, genetic engineering are taught through:

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells as a means to resolve the Moral Status of the Embryo debates . The emergence of iPSCs was thought to be an escape out from the ethical issues surrounding ESCR, however, more recent work has shown that there are debates regarding the genetic profile and therapeutic potential of these cells.

Gametogenesis,/meiosis asymmetric division, fertilization, embryogenesis, cell differentiation, cell death, hormonal cycles/ OHSS are taught through:

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells as a means to resolve the Moral Status of the Embryo debates. The emergence of iPSCs was thought to be an escape out from the ethical issues surrounding ESCR, however, more recent work has shown that there are debates regarding the genetic profile and therapeutic potential of these cells.

Oocyte Procurement: Coercion or Consent? Debates over whether women are adequately informed of risks and benefits and whether they should be paid for providing eggs for stem cell research using bioethical and feminist perspectives such as choice and autonomy vs. exploitation and vulnerability within the context of larger issues such as the exploitation of people based on race, class and gender and the outsourcing of basic reproductive or, in this case, regenerative labor.Animal models, cell culture models versus human subjects research. Dose response, cell tracing techniques, and biomarker indications of cell regeneration are taught through:

21st Century Snake Oil: Unregulated Adult Stem Cell Therapies . The emergence of companies that will offer stem cell therapies with no clinical trial evidence has alerted the stem cell community. The FDA has stepped in and issued injunctions in the states and the International Stem Cell Society has a public advocacy campaign called A Closer Look at Stem Cells that promotes efforts to warn patients of these unregulated industry practices. Futhermore, disability rights advocates argue that the focus on cure competes with the social model of care and results in a disproportionate economic investment in curing rather than supporting people with disabilities.

The Course

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A one-semester non-majors biology course using a social justice frame and information design has been developed to explore the field of stem cell research and cater to the learning approaches of liberal arts and art/design students while helping students develop the cognitive flexibility necessary to address capacious problems. The course is centered around six modules that can be used together as they are in this course, or parsed out and used in a stand alone format in courses that have stem cell research as one topic of many. A central theme in the course centers on cell potentiality and the connection to stem cell procurement- how does the source relate to the degree of potential, and how does the method match society’s values, and how do we shape social policy when values clash? The two major assignments in the course include cases studies and outreach projects. The case studies are based on real world events, involve role-play, and are designed to become progressively more challenging by moving from historical examples (HeLa) to more contemporary issues such as an exploration of how regulatory and advisory boards to address oocyte procurement are composed, and what governs their operation. The outreach projects are student-designed projects that inform the public about stem cell biology or a stem-cell related phenomenon and span a variety of formats including information design, audio, video, and print. The curriculum development is the result of a collaboration among faculty spanning 7 disciplines, is supported by external funding from NYS DOH, and the pilot course described here is designed to provide a testing ground for the modules and inform the scale up of this course for approval as a University Course that would address core competencies for general education.

The syllabus takes two forms: a short two-page syllabus that provides an overview on page 2 and a longer form beginning on page 5 in which the weekly readings are preceded by 1) a short 200-word framing paragraph 2) artists’ works focused on cell and biological research, and 3) Short Media Clips to engages the students in the topic at hand. In addition to this syllabus there are ancillary materials such as review questions for readings and, in the future, info graphics to help students see the interrelatedness of concepts and events.

Evaluating Learning

We used a backwards design to develop embedded assessments for assignments and activities to assess student learning in a progressive manner. Each of the five major learning outcome categories was assessed by at least two different types of activities: one traditional activity such as labs or exams and another more student-centered and constructivist learning activity such as the case study role-play and outreach projects (darker shading). Interestingly when the student designed outreach projects spanned all the learning outcomes when they were viewed as a collective i.e. each project hit on at least one learning outcome (lighter shading). In addition to the standard course evaluation form, we designed a customized one and also customized the SALG and plan to revise these course evaluation and student learning surveys. The assessment and evaluation strategies are outlined below and are being revised based on the pilot run of the course in spring 2011. Exams: Students were given a pre-course, midterm, and post-course exam that measured their understanding of the biological, ethical, social, and political dimensions of stem cell research and their historical understanding of events that influenced this field of research. via timeline constructions or Historical Episode Maps (Lin , C.Y, 2010). The exams were intended to assess developmental learning through the Revised Blooms Taxonomy of Cognitive Learning such that some questions were simply asking student to recall information while others asked students to apply or synthesize knowledge learned to address a specific question or problem. Exams are being analyzed for student learning gains. The richness of students answers is being measured, not simply by marking a correct or incorrect answer, but rather coded, as to determine the degree to which a student made developmental progress in the course.

Authentic and Performative Assessment: Case Studies. The rubrics adapted to guide students in the case studies were also used to evaluate analytical skills and communications skills, both oral and written. One rubric was an adaptation of the Evidence and Trade Offs rubric developed by the BEAR Assessment System (Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research) originally designed for middle school students within the context of an issues oriented curriculum.

Authentic and Performative Assessment: Outreach Projects. These projects were progressively assessed using rubrics for each of the following with 1) a progress report with annotated bibliography and metacognitive questions regarding research challenges and surprises and needs assessment for the product 2) Progress report addressing very structured set of twenty questions regarding medium, collaboration, community partner, etc, 3) final report that returns to the twenty questions 4) Oral presentation to the class. We are analyzing the final reports and mapping student language back to the five major categories of learning outcomes.

Formative In Class Assessments: Given the range of student’s backgrounds in this course, it was necessary to take the pulse of the course frequently. In class concept maps, and in class ” quizzes” that were not graded, and in-class questions/group work were a common practice in the course to assess student learning and challenges, and to inform my teaching. In addition, video news clips that captured the essence of the subject at hand were used as discussion prompts to see where students could take the conversation and the types of questions they would generate demonstrating an ability to be critical.

Peer Assessment: We had the unique opportunity of having two students who formerly took this course in a different format sit in on the class sessions and record notes of what transpired in the classroom, reflecting on the learning, or the lack of learning or learning challenge, in the classroom; this peer insight was invaluable. Since both of these students serve as Science Fellows, in that they have read articles on biology education, visualization in biology, and critical pedagogy, their perspective was rich and provided a dimension that was quite helpful in monitoring student engagement and learning.

Lin, C-Y. et al. 2010. Making science vivid : Using historical episode maps. International Journal of Science Education. 32(18): 2521-2531.
Chamany K., et al. 2008. Making biology learning relevant to students: Integrating people, history, and context into (college) biology teaching. Life Sciences Education. (7):267-278. http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/reprint/7/3/267.pdf
Wilson, M. and K. Sloane. 2000. From principles to practice: An embedded assessment system. Applied Measurement in Education. 13 (2): 181-208. (BEAR Rubric).

Policy Maker Assignment: Students were asked to adopt the role of a congressional aide of a specific policymaker. The policymaker asked the aide to review issues on stem cell research and help the policymaker craft a position statement. The aide must write two variations; one that supports the research and one that does not using the same evidence base and being careful to stay in line with the policymakers overall position on related issues. Student review the life and voting history of one NY Congressional Representative and both Congressional Senators and pay close attention to their position and voting record on stem cell research and related issues and their personal history where applicable (where did they go to school, how were they educated, what is their profession, background, district, who do they align themselves with?) Then they write two 300- word statements. Students provided summaries that were particularly useful when the class prepared to send representatives to the DC Symposium. In the spring 2011 course, this assignment set the stage for developing contextualized relativism.Congressional Memoir and Academic Essay/ Controversial Quote: Students read chapters from the book Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right Wing Assault on Reason by Diane Degette, which provides an account of Colorado Representative and Deputy Whip experiences in bringing bipartisan support forward for embryonic stem cell research. Students then chose one quote from the text and formulate an academic essay that is evidence based and takes a position with respect to the quote.

Case Studies: There are four case studies in this course and they all focus on human subjects research, but each has a unique context that encourages students to move from dualism to a position of relativism but only after being exposed to all stakeholders positions. Two of the course case studies required students to conduct a deep research dive to adopt the single perspective of a real person involved in some aspect of stem cell research or cell biology research, engage in dialogue with other stakeholders via role-play, and then reflect on the multiple perspectives presented during the dialogue and readings, and then come to a position via a written essay on the subject that required them to address at least TWO different perspectives using evidence that illustrates their understanding of the benefits, risks, and trade-offs involved with any social policy making. We constructed the case scenario to promote discussion and dialogue rather than debate, as we wanted to expand students’ worldview and tolerance for value systems that might differ from their own. The first case is focused on the history of HeLa, the first human cell line to be cultured, the second revisits some of the same issues but on an international scale addressing oocyte procurement for embryonic stem cell research, and explores other female tissues that might serve as better sources of stem cells such as fat cells or menstrual blood cells, the third case explores international concern regarding therapeutic misconception surrounding stem cell therapies, and the last case study is an exploration of how regulatory and advisory boards are composed and what governs their operation.

Student Outreach Projects: To empower students to make the transition from personal interest to situational interest (course on stem cell research), we asked students to self identify an outreach project topic and medium that resonated with them. Students with a feminist studies perspective tended to focus their attention on oocyte procurement and the biology of the egg can created Dipity Timelines, students with interest in literature wrote critical book reviews, students grappling with basic biology developed educational songs in the format of schoolhouse rock to educate youth about the central dogma, and students interested in policy developed timelines infographics. Students were organized into groups or worked alone on six different projects focused on raising awareness about stem cell research and its ethical, legal, and social dimensions. These independent projects were coupled with proposals, progress reports, and project reports. They ranged from and educational workshop held at an undergraduate conference on social justice, to a 7- minute video on Stem Cells in the City. ‘

Lab: Planaria. Though planaria are often used to teach developmental biology, and cell regeneration, we reviewed existing curricula and took the elements we felt best reflected our goals and added a dimension of inquiry that we felt highlighted the genes and environment relationship that is often very challenging for students to grasp. Though the activity included a worksheet and collaboration among all groups of pairs of students to make meaning of the results, students felt lost as the placement of the activity came too early in the course, did not requires students to submit a report, and in general remain disconnected for students. We are in the process of revising the implementation of this activity and designing appropriate evaluation instruments for students learning. Note: the appearance of questions that extended the knowledge learned here on the midterm exam caught students off guard.

Media Viewings: Students watch many forms of media, some created by students, others included videos of the National Academy of Sciences Hearings on C-Span or video archives from The New York State Stem Cell Science Ethics Committee Hearings, The New York Stem Cell Foundation Media Event on the State of Stem Cell Science, and more. Each of these viewings or events demonstrated how people in different venues were preparing a message to a wider audience and how the message was framed or captured by the media and for what purpose. These viewings then informed their reflective essays and progress reports on their self-designed community outreach project.

D4D- Debating for Democracy Workshop: Students attended a one-day workshop on advocacy hosted by Soapbox Consulting that helped them prepare for policy maker meetings, letter writing, and campaigning. Kush’s book the One Hour Activist was provided via Project Pericles in the spring 2009 version of the course.

DC Symposium Student Representative Proposals and Reports: Students were asked to submit a one-page proposal stating why they should represent the class at the SENCER DC symposium. The class then voted after reading the proposals and two students secured funding from the College Student Union to attend the Symposium. Students who attended the DC symposium were asked to develop and rehearse their “take aways” for the local policy maker meeting (Rangle’s education aide) and to also report back to the class about the experience and what they learned. during the spring 2009 version of the course.

Outside Events Reflection: Students attend an outside event about stem cell research and comment on Who (who attended who hosted, who asked questions, who presented), What (purpose, outcome, intended effect), How (what media or message was used, how did the event connect to course readings, topics, experiences, projects).

Background and Context

Course History (how was it developed and implemented)
I learned of SENCER in 2004 when I attended a SENCER summer institute as an “advanced team leader” for my interdisciplinary science department. To prepare for this institute I had reviewed many of the model courses, SLAG, and other resources on the SENCER website. I came back to my campus determined to infuse a social justice and civic engagement component into some of my biology courses and did this for a number of years until I became a SENCER Leadership Fellow in 2008. At that time, I decided to revamp a unit in an introductory cell biology course into a full-blown semester length course that would attract non-majors from across the university using the SENCER model approach. I chose stem cells because our institution is in New York, and New York was one of the first states to exercise states rights and appropriated state money toward embryonic stem cell research in 2007, and because I felt that students interested in social justice believed that biology was not relevant to their work. In 2009, I launched the first iteration of this course and was supported by internal university funds designed to promote civic engagement. The course was a success, in that it attracted a wide range of majors, 50% of which were freshman. Students learned the biology, were truly engaged using their own vantage points, and four of the seven freshman in this course went on to major in Interdisciplinary Science specifically because of the way in which this course presented biology in context. The course was designed to involve students in a series of service learning activities that included: assisting the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) postdoctoral fellows in communicating their work for the wider public; developing a newsletter for campus; contributing essays for the NYSCF newsletter; developing post-cards that highlight the work and the policies of stem cell research distributed in NYC; organizing a panel session on stem cell research and oocyte donation for the wider public; developing animations and materials for the NYSCF website; hosting a Facebook NYSCF site; and developing a proposal to open a campus chapter of the Student Society for Stem Cell. Students gained a great deal from the public events planning experience, as we sent two students to present the work on the curriculum and outreach to the SENCER DC Symposium at Capital Hill in April 2009. This experience was life changing for these students in terms of their academic trajectories; from that point forward these two students integrated the natural sciences with the arts and design.

However, the overarching goals for service learning were a real challenge and the course had a very heavy biology focus and so, I regrouped. Learning from this experience, I successfully secured external funding from the NY State Department of Health and pulled together a team of faculty from health psychology, gender studies, disability rights, literature, religious studies, health policy and advocacy, learning sciences research, and information design to collaborate on a revision of this course such that there would be a more balanced representation of the multiple perspectives, visual as well as textual learning resources to help students struggling to make meaning of the biology, and appropriate assessments to gauge interdisciplinary learning. We also decided that the course curriculum should be modular so that each faculty member on the curriculum development team could pilot portions in their social science courses and that we might disseminate this curriculum through venues in which a range of faculty from the liberal arts could adapt modules for their own use.

Given my past experience in designing stem cell curricula for majors and developing case study modules that integrate biology and social justice, I decided to use very streamlined versions of case studies for this introductory interdisciplinary course . We also agreed as a team that the case studies must encourage students to rethink positions based on changing evidence and help students progress through William Perry’s Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development; to move from dualistic ways of thinking about controversy to contextualized relativism and the knowledge that personal choices will be informed by analytical analyses and personal values. (http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/~mboyer/burcha2.html AND http://fod.msu.edu/oir/Learners/cognitive-moral-emotional.asp

Institutional Context (how does it fit into the curriculum)
Presently the course satisfies the elective for students who are Gender Studies Minors. It does not presently satisfy the elective for other majors, but students across the university can receive academic credit for the course as part of their total 120 credits. The course is a four-credit twice a week seminar course and will be offered again in spring 2012 for the second time in this format. After this pilot run we will assess how the course is achieving its goals and consider whether we would want to scale up to a University Lecture Model, in which the course is 3 credits, meets once a week in lecture and once a week in recitation. Converting the course into a University Lecture would make it more accessible to students in the Parsons School of Design, and perhaps other students in the New School for Public Engagement.

Stem cell research is a topic that continues to be covered in our standard cell biology course using a SENCER approach but only one unit of many, and we feel that the level of biology in that course is more appropriate for our majors in the Interdisciplinary Science Program.

Related Resources

The course has garnered much attention and has resulted in a public programming series on campus in 2009, four undergraduate research projects on science education and science communication via information design, faculty research, and a number of public speaking engagements at science education conferences. Beginning with internal funding from the Lang College Project Pericles in 2009 ($1500) and more recently with external funding from the state ($212, 914) we have created the time and space to further develop the project. http://stemcell.ny.gov/Undergraduate_Curricula.html

Students: Five undergraduate students have worked on this project in the capacity of Science Fellows and received independent study credit for their work on this project. In addition we have launched a series of Federal Work Study job postings for which four students are currently generating content and curricular resources for this project. One student who graduated chose to complete her master’s thesis in African American Literature and Health at Suffolk University using the HeLa story as the basis for a play titled Healing. Another student who was an economics major, switched majors in 2009 during the pilot run of this course, and is now in a NSF PREP program designed to prepare students from under-represented minorities to pursue graduate school in the naturals sciences and he plans on studying cancer stem cells. Another is completing her first REU experience in developmental biology looking at microRNA asymmetric partitioning in early oogenesis in summer of 2011 and had completed an internship at a PGD/IVF center in England in summer of 2010.

Faculty Research: In 2009, due to shared interest around IVF/ PGD as a way to generate diseased cell lines for study of breast cancer, a faculty member in health psychology/gender studies and a biology faculty member came together to collaborate on a project that required an integration of the PGD/IVF techniques and the psycho-social, and also offered an opportunity for the biologist to learn qualitative research methods. This collaboration resulted in some interesting products (see below) but also led to further collaboration on the stem cell curriculum and new insight on using information design to teach sophisticated biological concepts and using the grounded theory method to code open-ended responses on student course evaluations and project reports as it relates to students learning outcomes.

Because we received funding from New York State Department of Health and the Empire State Stem Cell Research Board faculty have identified new research opportunities. One member of team has been asked to give the First Year Orientation Book Talk on Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in fall 2011. One member of the team has taken the work into his graduate level courses on health care policy and has had 6 students submit papers on stem cell research and health advocacy or policy. Some of these will be submitted for publication in health policy journals. The information design team member has generated a new area of research around stem cell history, biology, and policy.

Invited talks, presentations and products

  1. Chamany, K., Covert, C. and N. Griffin. April 2009. Stem Cells In the City:Making Biology Relevent Through Local Community Projects. Poster. SENCER DC Symposium. Washington DC. Two students presented this poster on the stem cell course in its first iteration.
  2. Chamany, K. Stem Cells and Social Justice. SENCER Summer Institute Aug 2009.
    Chicago. Selected Workshop Leader. Presented workshops on stem cells and social
    justice based on a new pilot of a SENCER course launched in spring 2009.
  3. Chamany, K and L. Rubin. Nov 2009. Attitudes of BRCA1/2 Carriers with Respect to PGD.Narrative Genetics Seminar. Columbia University. This project emerged from collaboration on two levels; biology for the health psychologists interested in delivering accurate information to their research subjects and in the other direction, Chamany was able to learn qualitative methodology by participating in the grounded theory approach used to code the interviews.
  4. Chamany, K. November3,2009. Biology and Social Justice Case Studies: An Innovative Approach for Reaching Diverse Student Populations. Invited Speaker. The New York Academy of Sciences. NYAS. http://www.nyas.org/events/Detail.aspx?cid=f94801ac-c1af-4348-bb86-a80add770437
  5. Chamany, K. , Knight, J. and Tanner, K. Dec 2009. Case Study Teaching: From the Bench to the Classroom. Invited Speaker. Minority Action Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology Annual Meeting. Presented the Hela Case Study in a workshop Model format. http://ascb.org/files/2009_annual_meeting_highlight.pdf
  6. Chamany, K. Rubin, L. Paunova, E. and Pantuso C. 2010. PBD for BRCA ½ Carriers Infographic and Information Pamphlet. This project involved three undergraduates (two science majors and one design major) and one graduate student and two faculty members in the design of an informational packet describing the psychosocial and health risks and benefits of PGD as a reproductive technology. http://www.elena-paunova.com/brca/questions.html
  7. Chamany, K. and other PKAL F21. January 22, 2010. A Kaleidoscope of Perspectives on Institutional Transformation, STEM & Beyond. AAC&U and PKAL Best Practices Panel. Washington DC. Served as a F21 Member who highlighted our Project Pericles Program and the Stem Cells course and student learning outcomes. http://www.aacu.org/meetings/annualmeeting/AM10/pkal.cfm
  8. Chamany, K. April 2010. SENCER DC Symposium. Invited Panelist and Leadership Fellow. Provided tips to newbies for interacting with congress and connecting courses to civic activities using the stem cells course as an example.
  9. Chamany, K. and Snitow A. Feb 2011. “Buying and Selling the Body” Session of The Body and State: How the State Controls and Protects the Body. Social Research Conference. The New School. NY, NY. Moderators. This will also result in the publication of the introduction to the conference papers for this session. http://www.newschool.edu/cps/body/program/
  10. Chamany, K, and Schwartz- Orbach, L. March 24 2011. Connecting Science to Society Through Interdisciplinary Curricula. AAC&U PKAL. Engaged Stem Learning: Promising and Pervasive Practices Conference. Miami, Fl. Selected Workshop/ Presenter. Lianna Schwartz-Orbach research assistant for Katayoun Chamany presented the student experience of the Stem Cells and Social Justice Course as student in the course and as a Science Fellow for the second run of the course
  11. Chamany, K. et al. May 24 2011. Stem Cells Across the Curriculum: Making Biology Relevant. NYSTEM Annual Conference. CUNY Graduate Center. NY, NY. Invited Speaker. Presentation on progress on the SCAC project