Sara Brownell honored with Bruce Alberts Award for Science Education from the American Society for Cell Biology

For Sara Brownell, President’s Professor in the School of Life Sciences, receiving the Bruce Alberts Award for Excellence in Science Education at the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) conference marked a full-circle moment of mentorship, inspiration and scientific impact.

This award, one of the most esteemed honors in science education, celebrates contributions to advancing teaching and learning in the field. For Brownell, the recognition carried a deeply personal resonance, reflecting her journey from a graduate student with budding curiosity about science education to a leader in the field. Named after Bruce Alberts, a towering figure in science education, author of Molecular Biology of the Cell and former editor-in-chief of Science magazine, the award brought Brownell back to her formative years as a graduate student.

She recalled reaching out to Alberts during her time as a graduate student at Stanford University. “I sent him an e-mail out of the blue, asking for his advice about transitioning from a basic science PhD to a possible career in science education.

That email led to a meeting, which proved transformative for Brownell. “I got super jazzed,” she said. “It was validating that such a leader in science advocated for science education research as a viable potential career path - that this type of research is important. Plus, I got my Molecular Biology of the Cell textbook signed!”

Brownell reflected on her journey from mentee to mentor, emphasizing the importance of remembering the impact of each interaction. “When I engage with undergraduates and graduates, I try to remember that this could be that one meeting that potentially is life-changing for that student. There is no way that Bruce Alberts remembers that meeting but it was pivotal for me,” she said.

She began her invited talk at the ASCB conference with a nod to her early interaction with Alberts, reading excerpts from their 2010 email exchange. “It was a fun way to start the talk with the beginning of my own journey,” she said.

Susan Walsh, associate professor of molecular and cell biology at Soka University, not only nominated Brownell for the award, but also introduced her at the event, and praised her innovative contributions to science education. “Sara has made waves in biology education research at the national level since her time in graduate school at Stanford,” Walsh said. There, Brownell’s first foray into science education research was assessing the impact of a set of newly developed course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in ecology and in molecular biology. Walsh highlighted how the timing of this effort coincided with the Vision and Change initiative, amplifying its impacts, and establishing Brownell early in her career as a national leader in the assessment of CUREs and a passionate advocate for the utility of CUREs as a mechanism for broadening access to research.

“Since then, Sara has focused not just on the content of a biology class or the methods of biology instructors, but emphasized the students’ experiences within our classrooms. Using data-driven pedagogical research, she seeks to get to the very roots of inclusivity across the entire spectrum from gender to ableism to socioeconomic status to classroom size to religious beliefs to determine how even the most well-intentioned instructors can inadvertently exclude students,” Walsh emphasized. This collection of research over Brownell’s 15 year career in science education has made her a national leader not only related to CUREs, but also in developing tools for instructors to teach and assess core concepts of biology, documenting gender biases in undergraduate biology, teaching evolution in more effective ways for religious students, and bringing light to the invisible identities that both students and instructors hold in the science classroom and how that can affect their experiences. 

The Bruce Alberts Award not only names Brownell among the leaders in her field, but also underscores the impact of her transformative work. She is among the most cited biology education researchers and her exploratory work has spurred new avenues of research. “I’ve always been drawn to tackling the underexplored areas of science education—and the assumptions we take for granted. For example, while I am a big proponent of active learning and always teach in active learning ways, my research team was one of the first groups to begin to document unintended consequences of active learning for students with marginalized identities because of increased social interactions in science classrooms. It doesn’t mean we give up active learning, but we need to be thoughtful about how the decisions that we are making when we teach in active learning ways could affect students differentially,” Brownell said.

Walsh noted, “Sara’s work has analyzed the emotional burden of being a biology student and how sharing identity can impact students’ cognitive load and subsequent mastery of the material.”

Walsh also pointed out Brownell’s reputation for challenging assumptions. “My friends and I have joked that Sara Brownell ‘flips the table’ when it comes to widely accepted teaching strategies,” she remarked.

Brownell’s current research focuses primarily on concealable stigmatized identities and highlights how instructors’ disclosures of these identities—such as LGBTQ+ identities or mental health challenges—can positively impact students. “It can take as little as three seconds to reveal and can have a positive effect on students with that identity and surprisingly, even students without that identity,” Brownell explained.

This research underscores the importance of how seemingly minor things in a course can affect inclusivity in science education. “I think what’s really cool about this is that in my talks and through showing this research, I’m actually modeling to people how easy it is to reveal an identity. It literally is just a sentence, and that’s it,” Brownell said.

As a strong advocate for inclusivity, Brownell also is the founder and director of the Research for Inclusive STEM Education (RISE) Center at Arizona State University, where she works with faculty, staff, and students to generate and disseminate research to foster inclusive academic STEM spaces at ASU and beyond. She truly reflects the words that Walsh used to describe her: someone who “truly embodies ASCB’s mission statement through her challenges to the education community to re-envision our classrooms as a welcoming and supportive environment for all students.”