Perspectives on Gender, NSCI 3250

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID: NSCI 3250
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in an interdisciplinary Natural Science and Humanities course for undergraduate students by Becky Talyn at California State University, San Bernardino. The open textbook provides content about the relationship between gender and science, focusing on biological aspects of sex, gender and sexuality. The main motivations to adopt an open textbook were both to save money for our largely economically disadvantaged students and to provide content in a broader array of areas than are available in a single textbook. Most student access these assigned readings on Canvas.

About the Course

Perspectives on Gender, NSCI 3250

Brief Description of course highlights: From the Course Catalog: Semester Prerequisite: junior or senior standing. Quarter Prerequisite: junior or senior standing. This interdisciplinary course uses scientific, humanistic, and social science perspectives to foster an understanding of how gender functions in individual lives, societies, and cultures. (Offered as CAL 3250, SSCI 3250 and NSCI 3250. Students may receive credit for only one of these courses.) Satisfies GE Category B5; DI designation; G designation. Formerly offered as NSCI 325, SSCI 325 and HUM 325.

From the Syllabus: Course Description: This interdisciplinary course uses analytical perspectives in natural, humanistic, and social sciences to foster an understanding of how gender roles in Western culture are established, maintained, and changed (offered as Natural Science 3250 and Social Science 3250). Though you are enrolled in a particular section of this course (NSCI or SSCI), you will attend class together and be held responsible for all course material from all course sections.

Prerequisite: junior or senior standing. Priority enrollment will be granted to graduating seniors. * Note: Students are not required to take this specific course to meet the multicultural/ gender requirement and/or the upper-division capstones in Social Sciences or Natural Sciences.

Student population: Perspectives on Gender is an upper division general education course. Students from all majors take it to complete their upper division science requirement. Intended for juniors or seniors, but there are no prerequisites.

Learning or student outcomes: Student Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to describe and discuss:
1. The difference between the terms “sex” and “gender”
2. Scientific, historical, and humanistic findings regarding physical, social, artistic and cognitive similarities and differences among various genders
3. Familiarity with a variety of conceptual frameworks useful in understanding gender and its roles in society and individual lives
4. Ways in which gender roles and stereotypes have been and continue to be perpetuated in private and public spaces.

Key Challenges faced and how they were resolved:

Our student population is largely economically disadvantaged.
We have been unable to find a textbook that covers the breadth of content that we discuss in this course.

Sample assignment from the course NSCI 3250 Sample Assignments.docx

About the Resource/Textbook

Textbook or OER/Low cost:

Brief Description: I did not use a single textbook. Instead I (and Celeste Nunez, who was teaching SSCI 3250 at the same time using a combined Canvas page for both courses) compiled reading assignments and videos from a variety of sources, including excerpts from several textbooks, scholarly articles, popular articles, newspaper articles, TED talks, and others.

In addition to the modules presented in detail above, additional modules covered gender in history, women in war, reproductive justice, women’s rights and ecofeminisms, civil rights, gender in science, gender in education, and women in media including an extensive discussion and readings about the Barbie movie.

Please provide a link to the resource: Unfortunately, there isn’t a single link that I can provide, since this is a collection of resources and the Canvas page requires login. However, many of the resources used are linked above, under Sample Assignments. The rest are available upon request.

Authors: Various, and see above and more details by request.

Student access: All course material were posted on Canvas (.pdf documents, embedded video, or weblinks). Instructors will post assigned readings dedicated to each topic organized by lecture date by Monday of the week. See course schedule for details. Content from the assigned readings were included on the two midterm exams and the final exam.

Supplemental resources: All the slides were created by myself and Professor Nunez. We also gave in-class written assignments which sometimes focused on assigned readings or videos, as well as two extensive discussion board assignments on Canvas, three exams that included content from readings, and the presentation assignment linked above.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook

Fall 2023:
1. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. (2nd. Edition)
2. Authors: Lisa Wade & Myra Marx Ferree
3. ISBN: 978-0-393-66796-7

New: $95.25
Used: $71.50
Digital: $28.00

4. Still needed to supplement

Spring 2024
1. All OER materials
2. Cost per student $0
3. 65 students enrolled
4. Savings

New: $6191.25
Used: $4647.50
Digital: $1820.00

License:

OER/Low Cost Adoption

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option.
Key Motivation

Our student population is largely economically disadvantaged.
We have been unable to find a textbook that covers the breadth of content that we discuss in this course.

Because there is no single appropriate textbook, using traditional readings would mean requiring students to purchase multiple textbooks to have all the appropriate content. This is inappropriate for the students at CSUSB. Collating open access materials gives us the opportunity to represent even more voices and perspectives that is specifically related to the topics and content discussed in the course.

Other Motivations
- Great approach for multidisciplinary or non-standard courses where available text books may not cover the breadth of content of the course
- Allows incorporation of multiple author’s perspectives, varying academic reading levels, and diversified approaches, voices and topics
- Students can take some responsibility for obtaining resources about the most current topics by including student projects/presentations/videos
- Students do appreciate the financial savings, which can be emphasized in the syllabus and/or introductory class period.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? I have collected these materials over the last 20 years, continuously adding and updating content as needed. This semester Professor Nunez was amenable to using her collected works to do the same, and we were able to completely avoid using a traditional text book by bringing our collected readings to the course.

Sharing Best Practices:
Library has great resources for student projects

Tutorials: https://libguides.csusb.edu/vtutorials
Newspaper search engines
Academic search engines
Library guides: https://libguides.csusb.edu/?b=s

Create a folder to save news articles & academic articles relevant to each course as you come across them

Reading Apprenticeship Institutes – join one if you can!!!
- Focuses on HOW you use readings & resource
- Quality over quantity

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved and lessons learned. Time consuming to curate resources, but in many disciplines, updating may not be as onerous

About the Instructor

Instructor Name: Becky Talyn
I am a Biology/Natural Sciences professor at the California State University, San Bernardino. I teach Perspectives on Gender, Environmental Science & Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Epistemological Revolutions: Critical Moments in the Intersection of Natural Sciences & Humanities -- Science, Technology & Society, and the three courses in the Natural Sciences BS major series. I am also developing an introductory course and a seminar for the new Sustainable Food Systems minor.

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://www.csusb.edu/profile/btalyn

Please describe the courses you teach. Most often teach:

HUM 3100/3150, Junior Honors Seminar in Science and Humanities; Science, Technology and Society
NSCI 3250, Perspectives on Gender (co-taught with CAL 3250 and SSCI 3250)
NSCI 1200, Foundations Seminar in Science, Environmental Sustainability and Social Responsibility
BIOL , Sustainable Agriculture

Other courses taught:
General Education
(lecture only unless specified otherwise) – Anatomy & Physiology, Human Biology w/ lab, Human Sexuality, Wild Color intensive lab, Concepts in biology: sex and gender, Human Reproduction and Sexual Behavior, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Genetics & Society, Science & Technology, Environment and Human Survival (now Human Ecology), Single subject teacher supervision.

Biology
– Introductory Biology lab, General Zoology lecture & lab, Anatomy & Physiology lab, Comparative Anatomy lab, Vertebrate Anatomy lab, Cell Biology and Physiology lab, Genetics lecture & lab, Behavioral Ecology lecture & lab, Sex and Gender: A Biological Perspective lecture & lab, Human Sexuality lecture, Field Ecology lab, Disciplinary Writing in Natural Science, Senior Capstone in Biology, Directed Study in Biology, Independent Study in Chemistry & Biochemistry, Directed Research in Biology.

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching. Note: For an example of my teaching philosophy in action during the COVID quarantine, see Talyn et al. 2021 in the Journal of College Science Teaching.

At its best, University education enculturates students into academic communities, including disciplinary ways of thinking, knowing and doing. This requires engaging students in solving meaningful problems, create knowledge, and discuss ideas for metacognitive reflection and to practice disciplinary communication. From introductory courses to senior research projects, learning how knowledge is created and what assumptions are implicit within disciplines are skills particularly applicable to students’ lives, building understanding of the human nature of scientific inquiry and introducing the multi-directional relationship between science, personal decision-making, and the creative coexistence of nature and humanity. I apply a focus on building students’ academic skills throughout the curriculum, from one-on-one work with research students to classes with nearly 300 students.

I have developed and taught a wide variety of courses in the 24 years since graduate school, including lower division, general education, and upper division courses. My teaching utilizes a wide variety of tools. For example, Epistemological Revolutions is an Honors course for juniors about the interplay of technology and society in the mid-1800s, which is team-taught with a professor from College of Arts & Letters, and uses three Reacting to the Past roleplaying “games”. Perspectives on Gender is a general education course I’ve taught for many years as a collaboration between faculty from the Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences, which explores gender and intersectional identities through lenses of all three disciplines. When I teach it, the science portion of the course focuses on sex determination and behavioral gender roles across species from a mechanistic, evolutionary and ecological perspective. These examples demonstrate my commitment to both collaborative and individual teaching across traditional disciplinary boundaries. These experiences have prepared me well to participate in the Interdisciplinary Environmental Science and Studies Program.

Using various tools creates inclusive, rigorous, trusting classroom environments. I use low stakes activities like write-to-learn, think-pair-share, small-group work including reading reflection and discussion (Talk to the Text), whole class discussions (through systems like iClickers and Kahoot! In large classes), peer-review, and culminating each activity with discussions to ensure that all students understand the main ideas. High stakes assessments I’ve used include term-long group projects with written, oral or video presentations, community-based service learning, Reacting to the Past historically-relevant role play assignments, and individual student oral presentations, posters or interviews. I scaffold these with short, high-quality, PowerPoint-based lectures that facilitate multi-media coverage of some course content, supported by carefully chosen preparatory readings and videos. My motivation for integrating these culturally-responsive approaches is to encourage all students to synthesize, analyze, apply and evaluate material, and use these ideas to formulate, articulate, and defend opinions based on the material. My focus on understanding the nature of scientific knowledge creation and discourse is facilitated by critical information literacy as a framework to scaffold projects.

Teaching at CSUSB, a public, land-grant University, since 2002 allows me to collaborate with diverse students, staff and faculty, including ethnic/racial and socioeconomic diversity, diversity of thoughts and ideas, and diversity of preparation, personal experience and knowledge. My approaches to teaching and mentoring are informed by 1) my work with facilitators and participants from the ISSUES-X, DIETIES, Pathways, and West-Ed Learning Communities; 2) reading books including How People Learn, Culturally Informed Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond and Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman, and numerous articles about anti-racism and teaching practices for equity and inclusion; and 3) participating in workshops, conferences, and year-long institutes. I work diligently to use student and colleague suggestions to improve my courses. For example, in response to student comments, I clarified and re-organized my LMS pages, added grading rubrics, and streamlined due dates. Over the last 5 years, I have shared these teaching approaches with others at CSUSB and across California through facilitation of and participation in Faculty Learning Communities sponsored by ISSUES-X and DIETIES grants, both funded through NSF’s IUSE program, and by WestEd’s Reading Apprenticeship and Leadership Community of Practice; and was recruited to develop and facilitate a program for CSUSB’s Pathways for Success, a Title V program funded through the US Department of Education. My extensive course development and pedagogy experience resulted in being recruited to develop the curricular components of a new Sustainable Food Systems minor that will begin next academic year.

I thrive mentoring (not just advising) research students. Since starting at CSUSB in 2002, I have mentored 34 undergraduate research students, published 11 peer-reviewed research papers and a review article (6 co-authored with undergraduate students, 8 interdisciplinary), and authored dozens of oral and poster presentations with students. My students and I meet weekly to discuss their process, progress and results; critique research articles; and collaborate writing proposals, presentations and publications. We devote time to practice presentations, discuss graduate and post-graduate options, and examine student concerns at the junction of private and professional life. All my students present their findings, including at the CSU-wide Student Research Competition, local, regional and national conferences. I remain in contact with many former research students. One recently was awarded tenure. Other current and former students are in Master’s degree programs and medical school; applying to medical school, dental school, and graduate programs; and working in biology research labs (including at Stanford University) and in the medical field.

Research Interests My training in environmental science and ecology research is broad, focused on both adaptive and non-adaptive outcomes of evolutionary history. My graduate and post-graduate research elucidated functional components of courtship song and acoustic signals in sexual selection in Drosophila and Hylid treefrogs, and the ability of animals to detect and avoid contaminated environments. In addition, my work has touched on neurobiology, reproductive biology, and genetics, as well as collaborative projects at the juncture of biology, geology, and astrobiology. Current research focuses in 3 areas. 1) Lab-based research explores sustainable agriculture and ecotoxicology, seeking to understand responses to environmental stress, including ability to detect and avoid toxic agrochemicals in the environment, as well as neurological, genetic and physiological mechanisms of herbicide toxicity to non-target animals. We are currently preparing a grant proposal for the NiCE program through the Division of Organismal Biology at NSF. 2) Social justice research aims to elucidate the degree of herbicide exposure in a neurodivergent population, and its relationship to social and economic factors, while educating the public about food safety and emergency response. 3) Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) research addresses STEM education at primarily minority institutions, focused on the role sense of belonging, creativity, and curiosity have on student outcomes. We are revising a NSF EHR-Core grant proposal. All three research foci utilize undergraduate research assistants.

Agricultural Ecotoxicology: Behavioral, Genetic and Neuroendocrine Mechanisms My current lab-based, experimental research in sustainable agriculture and behavioral ecotoxicology explores neuroendocrine mechanisms and the role of microbes in mediating behaviors and mechanisms that result from environmental challenge. We have established Drosophila as a model system to study how animals respond to perturbations in their chemical environment, focusing on toxic effects of glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs). Our work has identified that Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, affect mortality, feeding behavior, reproductive output, ovary and testes size, oviposition behavior, and activity. Even with the high teaching load characteristic of a Cal State, this work, started in 2016, has resulted in three student co-authored peer reviewed research articles (Talyn et al. 2019, Muller et al. 2021, Elias, et al. 2021) with one in review and three in prep; and one published review article (Talyn et al. 2023), with one in review for a special issue of the Journal of Xenobiotics that I am co-editing and one in prep. These establish Drosophila as an appropriate model organism to study herbicide toxicity, examining the toxicity of glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) in terms of mortality (Talyn et al. 2019; Talyn et al. in prep) and on particular behaviors like feeding (Elias et al. 2021), activity (Bartels et al. in progress), oviposition habitat selection (Carballo et al. in progress), and reproduction (Muller et al. 2021; Winston et al. in prep; Bracamontes et al. in progress). Our results indicate that the active ingredient in commercial formulations is not the only, or perhaps even the most, toxic component (Roddam et al. in revision), suggesting synergistic interactions among ingredients that we continue to examine. In the last 5 years this project resulted in winning the Evans Award (2019) and presenting 25 posters and 15 oral presentations at conferences co-authored with undergraduate student researchers.

Our active projects investigate genetic and neuroendocrine mechanisms of environmentally-induced behavioral changes. Experiments underway examine:

Ability of Drosophila to detect/avoid contaminated environments, including sensory mechanisms that contribute to, and evolutionary and fitness consequences of, feeding and oviposition behavior;
Relationships between feeding behavior and activity level in response to environmental exposure;
Recovery of individuals and populations after environmental contamination is removed;
Fitness consequences of herbicide exposure during the larval period;
Genetic mechanisms underlying sensitivity to contamination, using the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP) for understanding the genetic basis of quantitative traits; and
Neuroendocrine regulation of behavioral and physiological reproductive toxicity, using pharmacological perturbations of juvenile hormone production and behavioral assays.

Projects in early stages extend this work. 1) Elucidate the roles of symbiotic and environmental microbiomes in contaminated environments. Examine the effect of herbicide exposure on the microbiome of the gut, reproductive system, and on food; and how the evolution of synergistic interactions between microbial and animal species mediate toxicological outcomes and mechanisms. 2) Understand the influence of selection from herbicide exposure on the evolution of herbicide sensitivity, which will strongly influence long-term ecological consequences of environmental contamination. 3) Apply transcriptome analysis to identify genetic pathways that regulate neuroendocrine mechanisms that are impacted by herbicide exposure, which will help to direct future study of neural pathways.

Community-Based Environmental Health: Herbicide Exposure in the Inland Empire, CA Project 1: Herbicide Contamination of the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea is surrounded by and drains intensively cultivated agricultural areas, specializing in alfalfa, citrus, and specialty crops. We assess contamination of Salton Sea water and sediment using both direct chemical testing and examining the biological impact of these materials on Drosophila to understand the toxicological consequences of agricultural contamination.
Project 2: Social & Economic Factors Affecting Exposure of Underserved Neurodivergent Populations. We assess public health implications of herbicide exposure, focusing on children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and their families. We examine relationships between social and economic factors and exposure to toxic herbicides through food, occupational, and residential exposure for populations in the Inland Empire of Southern California. This work emphasizes the social consequences of environmental practices and the importance of disseminating the implications of our work to the public. We plan to extend this work to examine a variety of populations in urban, suburban and rural areas.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): Impact of Institution and Student Population Characteristics on Student Outcomes in College STEM Education Research – Implications to DEI Research at primarily white-serving Universities shows that strong sense of belonging improves retention among URM students. Our research explores how student’s sense of belonging, creativity, creative self-efficacy, and curiosity (BCCC) are influenced by institutional and individual characteristics; and how these attitudes & perceptions impact student success. We explore what role systemic minoritization, vs. being a minority in classes and on campus, play in the relationship between BCCC and student success; comparing students from CSUSB, where most students identify as URM and are first-generation, to students at other types of universities and colleges. The student population at Towson differs from that at CSUSB and other institutions involved in this project, and will provide an interesting counterpoint for continued collaborations. Since beginning SoTL research in 2019, we have one peer-reviewed publication (Talyn et al. 2021) and several conference papers.