Sarah Bunnell is the Associate Director and STEM Specialist for the Center for Teaching and Learning. Prior to joining Amherst, she was an Associate Professor of Psychology and Great Lakes Colleges Association Teagle Pedagogy Fellow at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental and Cognitive Psychology with a minor in Quantitative Methods from the University of Kansas. She is the current Treasurer and past US-Regional Vice President for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and is currently on the steering committee of a three-year Mellon Foundation grant examining interdisciplinary team teaching practices in the liberal arts, focusing on the intersection of the Sciences and the Arts/Humanities.
Please contact Sarah if you would like to discuss assignment, course, or departmental curricular design, assessment of student learning, or other areas of teaching and learning in the Sciences. She welcomes all scope of conversations, ranging from how to redesign a single class activity to rethinking the structure of departmental curriculum. She is also available to support faculty and staff in scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) research projects.
Sarah’s SOTL research interests include interdisciplinary and team teaching, the development of students’ metacognition, and best practices in faculty development broadly defined. Recent pedagogical publications:
Bunnell, S.L., & Bernstein, D.J. (2018). Helping university teachers embrace threshold concepts in scholarly teaching using a problem-based learning approach. In M. Savin-Baden & G. Tombs (Eds.), Threshold Concepts in Problem-Based Learning (Chapter 7). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Anderson, L.J., Bunnell, S.L., & Yates, J.R. (2017). Improving Student Learning through an Interdisciplinary Case Study: Exploring Eutrophication in Lake Erie. Case Studies in the Environment.
Bunnell, S.L. & Bernstein, D.J. (2014). Improving Engagement and Learning through Sharing Course Design with Students: A Multi-level Case. Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, 13.
Bunnell, S.L., & Bernstein, D.J. (2012). Overcoming Some Threshold Concepts in Scholarly Teaching. The Journal of Faculty Development, 26(3), 14-18.
Her CV is located here.