National Science Foundation Grant
PTF Vernita Gordon was awarded a National Science Foundation Grant on April 1, 2022 as principal investigator. The research objective of the grant is to develop a predictive framework for understanding how bacteria use proteins in their cell envelopes to sense and respond to the mechanics of the surface to which they attach. As part of this grant, Gordon and her team proposed to build in ethics and mindset education for Physics Department students, based on her PTF initiative, which included a psychology research scientist to oversee parts of the Initiative and measure impacts.
According to the grant abstract, Gordon and her team have this reasoning for including her initiative in the grant activities:
Mentoring and education in ethics and mindset will improve the undergraduate environment and pipeline for STEM majors. A study of classroom education methods will improve undergraduate STEM education.
Read more about the grant on the National Science Foundation website.
Related Initiatives
Being Human in Physics
(Project completed 2023) At UT Austin, undergraduate women are about twice as likely to leave the physics major then are undergraduate men. This does not arise primarily from academic difficulties–women physics majors and men physics majors are dismissed (for academic reasons) or drop out at roughly the same rates. Rather, women are more likely to switch out of the physics major into other majors than are men.