6 minute read
Dr. Sarah McLean
What are you currently working on?
r “One of the projects that I'm working on is a continuation of a project with Andrew Horne and Dr. Tyler Beveridge about students' grade perceptions. Many educators view that students earn grades –they start from zero, whereas students often see that they begin at a hundred and then lose grades. This creates a tension about grades between educators and students. I also know that students have concerns about their GPA and how it canoftentimes be a gatekeeper tofuture career paths and professional programs – this tension can result in students engaging in various grade negotiation behaviours. In Andrew’s project asked if we could change grade negotiation behaviour by changing whether students have grades presented such that they earn grades instead of lose grades. The short answer is no, we couldn’t change it. Building off this research, Dr. Beveridge and I and our graduate student, Jenna Yuen, are looking at if those grade perceptions still persistin dentistry students. Yes,they do. In terms of grades, there's not going to be a perfect solution, but we wanted to disentangle this as much as we can. The other major project I'm working on right now is in collaboration with Dr. Anita Woods and our Clinical Anatomy graduate student, Nicole Setterington. This research supports my role as Director of SEED, the Schulich Education Enhancement Division. We wanted to investigate a way to give students the ability to give timely feedback on tech issues as they arose after the switch to fully online learning with the pandemic. But what we found is that many students didn’t know that this existed and so we came up with a new solution using Padlet, allowing students to post and upvote/downvote feedback. We had some initial success with this approach and Dr. Woods decided to expand the feedback system to a few undergraduate physiology courses. Now we’re developing a 3.0 version and are excited as to what that might look like.”
Advertisement
“I'm really passionate about experiential and active learning. I have a few different projects that I'm working on – one is MASCOT, the Medical Sciences Community Outreach Team, in collaboration with Dr. Jeff Frisbee, Jenn Devlin, and our experiential learning coordinator, Jedd Sardido. We've partnered with a number of different community organizations that primarily help to enact change in marginalized, equity-seeking groups and underserved populations in London. So, if students want to gain these opportunities, then connect them to those volunteer organizations.That’s my ultimate goal, to help students with expanding the boundaries of where they see their education taking them. ”
AssociateProfessor
More about herresearch https://bit.ly/McLeanInfo
Contact Info sarah.mclean@schulich.uwo.ca (519) 661-2111 Ext. 88587
What are some of your future goals?
What important steps did you take to kickstart your career?
“When I was in high school, I remember taking a physics course and getting the highest grade in the class, despite being told that it was a ‘boys’ science’. I liked helping people and was good at science, so my parents were suggested Ibecomea doctor, and I agreed. I started my degree at the University of Waterloo in Pre-Health Pre Optometry, basically pre-med. I was very stuck on this path. Then, when I was in my first year, my mom got diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that I knew little about and that there was little research on. As I was accompanying her to different medical appointments and hearing about her experiences with physicians and like her rheumatologist, they very much turned me off from medicine. I was frustrated and disappointed about the level of care and the lack of insight that existed into autoimmune diseases. She passed away when I was at the end of my third year and that totally changed my perception of what I wanted to do. I instead looked into research, motivated by the gap in knowledge and my troubling experience.”
“Seeing the acceptance of that type of scholarly work and being able to work with highquality Clinical Anatomy students has been really influential for my career path.
“I later started working with Dr. John Di Guglielmo here at Western. I was really supported in his mentorship – he gave good insight as to how to think like a scientist and he treated me like a scientist.I also had numerous teaching opportunities throughout my academic training. I was an undergrad teaching assistant, andI got my hands wet inteaching all sorts of different courses – microbiology, the biology of aging, histology, vertebrate zoology. I started working with in the third-year lab course for physiology, and Dr. Anita Woods suggested that I try in the second year one, because that would give me a little bit more opportunity to teach. There came a time when a faculty member that was going on sabbatical. I put myself out there and offered to teach. As a PhD candidate, I was able to teachfundamental physiology to a large class and helped prove that I could do that work.”
“Once I was coming to the end of my PhD, there was a position posted and IMS and one of my great mentors, Professor Tom Stavraky, saw the posting encouraged me to apply. I read a statistic that women will only apply for jobsif they have 100% of the qualifications, whereas men will apply if they have 60% of the qualifications.I felt like I was taking a bit of a leap, but I ended up getting the position. With this position I was expected to develop a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research stream, and engage in e-learning. So, I completed my Master’s of Education last June to help with that. My research program is within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Medical Sciences disciplines. Anatomy & Cell Biology is a great department that values this type of research, so I feel like I'm in a really good place. Seeing the acceptance of that type of scholarly work and being able to work with high quality students through the Clinical Anatomy program has been really influential for my career path.”
What steps were influential to getting you to where you are now?
“I think for me, it was pushing outside of my comfort zone and taking risks, even when I doubted myself. People in academia experience a lot of imposter syndrome, especially women more than male colleagues. The encouragement from my mentors pushed me to throw my hat in the ring. Getting those positions, even when I felt underqualified, lined me up for futurecollaborations with the Center for Teaching and Learning. I also signed up to be the faculty lead for Alternative Spring Break. It really opened my eyes to the needs of the community and that launched me into becoming passionate about community engaged learning. In my spare time, I work with an outreach group helping people deprived of housing and created strong partnerships with several different community partners as well and has instilled in me the importance of bringing lived experience into the classroom. Wecan talk a lot aboutwhat we read in textbooks, but we'd be remiss if we forgot about the human aspect of it.”
What’s your favourite thing about research?
“I really enjoy the reciprocal relationship of mentorship, especially when my students and trainees come back with even better ideas than I do. They are becoming the experts. I have an experiential learning grant with Dr. Nicole Campbell and experiential learning with two of my former students related to experiential learning. One is working on a research project looking at barriers for STEM faculty when it comes to implementing community engaged learning, and the other student is working on the value of perspective-taking in STEM. Seeing their growth and their commitment to this is just awesome. The faculty collaboration too, like those with Dr. Beveridge, Dr. Woods, and Dr. Campbell makes research that much better. The relationships you form are the best part of research.”
