Gale Hansen Starich is one of 76 U.S. educators named to the first class of academic fellows cited for their roles in engaging science and math students with courses and curriculum rooted in real-world problems...
Gale Hansen Starich, Brenau University dean of health and sciences, is one of 76 U.S. educators named to the first class of academic fellows cited for their roles in engaging science and math students with courses and curriculum rooted in real-world problems.
The 18-month appointment is to the Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) fellowship, a National Science Foundation-sanctioned initiative to encourage and support faculty development though a coordinated set of activities and programs. Administered by Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in the Pennsylvania capital, the initiative was developed to strengthen college and university curricula in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and to extend student learning into broader community and societal applications.
Starich and other fellows in the inaugural class were selected from more than 1,300 eligible faculty and academic leaders throughout the country. “A leader in women’s education, Dean Starich has worked to instantiate SENCER principles and ideals in the curriculum at Brenau University,” said National Fellowship Board Chair David Ferguson, a distinguished service professor in the technology and society department at New York’s Stony Brook University. He said she was selected because of her desire to apply her learning and access to fellowship resources to Brenau programs for teachers and non-traditional students, including those studying online.
SENCER resources at her disposal include symposia, workshops, publication and cross-institution collaboration with others involved in the programs. Others represented in the program include such science-heavy institutions as the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brigham Young University, Duke University and Rutgers University.
“Gale Starich’s selection to this program underscores the validity of Brenau University’s new cross-discipline approach to liberal arts curriculum,” said Brenau President Ed Schrader. “She knows that scientists and mathematicians of the future have to look out the windows of their laboratories and away from their equation-packed chalkboards into the real world they inhabit.”
Nevada native Starich, an endocrinologist and professor of biochemistry, joined the Brenau faculty and administration in 2002. Previously she served on faculty at the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno, as executive director of the Western Student Medical Research Forum, as scientific director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute High School Science Impact Program and as faculty fellow and grades K-16 coordinator for the University and Community College System of Nevada. A fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, she has been involved with numerous research teams and publishing initiatives for scientific and medical journals.