Elly Vandegrift is the Director of the Global Studies Institute. Elly brings to this role two decades years of experience in many UO positions and types of units, from EMU events services to the Teaching Engagement Program, career faculty in Biology to associate director of the Science Literacy Program, capped off with five years experience in the Global Studies Institute itself. With global partners she has developed and facilitated customized STEM education and communication workshops at the University of Oregon and across the world with partners such as Nagoya University, Mohammed Al-Mana College of Health Sciences, the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). As GSI Director, she leverages a track record of hands-on doing; landing and running grants, gifts, and contracts; direct work with international donors and funding agencies; as well as curricular, pedagogical, and programmatic innovation in global contexts.
Elly served as co-chair of the Steering Committee and a member of the leadership team for the Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching (now the National Institute on Scientific Teaching ), an organization dedicated to providing teaching professional development for current and future faculty based on the pillars of inclusivity, active learning, and assessment.
Previously, Elly led the University of Oregon Science Literacy Program to support curricular and pedagogical reform to make science interesting, engaging, and relevant for all students and provide pedagogical professional development and mentorship to science faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. She has directed the university’s Alan Alda for Communicating Science Affiliate program, and co-founded the Provost’s Teaching Academy.
As recognition of her teaching excellence, Elly has received four pedagogy awards selected by her peers: the inaugural 2019 UO Biology Committee for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for outstanding contributions; the 2017 UO Thomas F. Herman Award for Specialized Pedagogy ; the 2016 UO Williams Fellow for Teaching Excellence; and the 2015 Association for the Study of Food and Society Pedagogy Award. Elly has also led student programs for science students to London and Saudi Arabia.
Elly graduated from Earlham College and completed her graduate work at Oregon State University. She is the author of several articles about STEM education reform and professional development.
Selected Articles:
- Vandegrift, E. and M. Withers. 2022. Looking Ahead While Leaving No One Behind: Resourcefulness and Resiliency Among North American Universities. in T. Izumi et al. (eds.), Safety and Resilience of Higher Educational Institutions, Disaster Risk Reduction, Springer, Singapore https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1193-4_7
- Withers, M., M. Monfared, FM Fung, VWY Lee, CA Lucio Ramírez, MAF Mendoza, C Zhou, EVH Vandegrift (2021). Teaching in Virtual Environments: Global Educational Development to Respond to Challenges and Opportunities of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Transformative Dialogues 14(2).
- Vandegrift, EVH, NC Barber, A Vitale, and T. Ward. 2020. Supporting Science Graduate Teaching Assistants and Undergraduate Learning Assistants Teaching Professional Development. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal. 13(3).
- Vandegrift EVH, and AJ Cavanagh. 2019. Building student literacy and metacognition through reading science in the news. CourseSource.
- Vandegrift, EVH, AB Mulnix, JR Yates, and SR Chaudhury. 2018. Workshopping a Workshop: Collaborative Design in Educational Development. To Improve the Academy 37(2), 207-227.