This month, we're featuring members of our SABER Scholars-in-Training community who were acknowledged for their talks or posters at our annual national meeting in July.
Our first "Human of DBER" for September is Rose Sofia, a PhD Student at Auburn University and 2026 recipient of the Bill Wood Graduate Talk Award.
My heart was for teaching right from the start. As a young child, I’d play teacher by arranging my stuffed animals in a semi-circle and surrounding them with my babbling, nonsensical lectures and haphazard scribbling on my Little Tikes chalkboard. I carried these memories of play fondly into my undergraduate biology degree, where I ecstatically accepted the opportunity to work as a tutor. Tutoring came naturally for me as I aspired to deliver enthusiasm and warmth to an otherwise stressful space, a space where some students were on their last leg. Yet halfway through my undergraduate biology degree, I kept hearing from my peers that enrolling in research credits was essential for meeting graduate professional degree requirements. The idea of “research” itself felt nebulous, almost like a box to check rather than a way of seeing and being in the world, one grounded in applying translatable skills into the real world. The word “research” lingered intimidatingly in the back of my mind until the spring semester of my junior year, when I enrolled in an upper-level Virology course expecting a similar prescriptive formula to any biology course: lectures and exams with little career relevance. However, the professor was anything but a passive lecturer; he was an active participant in our learning and occupational goals. He’d host resume nights, and it was there he encouraged me to apply for a position in his laboratory studying the impact of common environmental pollutants on mosquito development. I took him up on the offer, albeit nervously anticipating what research was actually like, but my hesitance immediately faded into the background, and the year I spent in the lab making friends and memories (and killing some not-so-nice mosquitoes) was invaluable.
As I was applying to graduate school, I couldn’t help but notice the little voice in the back of my head wondering whether I could find myself back to teaching. Browsing online and reading lab websites, I found Dr. Cissy Ballen. I was amazed at what she and the lab were doing! I had never heard of biology education research before, and I was enticed by the possibility of redirecting my career journey, so I cold-emailed her. As I will always be grateful for, Cissy took me under her wing and has guided me through multiple ongoing projects, specifically projects that aim to understand how undergraduate biology students perceive and interact with terms described as harmful in invasion biology. Among the many responsibilities of a graduate researcher, I also teach introductory biology labs and serve as the public relations officer for the F.S. Arant Auburn University Entomology and Plant Pathology club, where I can provide a welcoming, collaborative learning space for all students. While I do wear multiple hats each day as a graduate student, fulfilling the role of an educator is the one that fits just right!
Thank you to my friends, colleagues, and mentors for supporting and guiding me. Thank you to my amazing family, to whom I am eternally grateful for providing me with wisdom, love, and strength throughout my life.
If you have a colleague in DBER that you'd like to nominate to be the next Human of DBER, please submit your nomination here! Nominations are welcome for members of the SABER and biology education research community, including undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, staff, educators, and community partners who contribute to biology education, research, or inclusive STEM initiatives.
