Keynote

Melanie Cooper
Michigan State University

Melanie Cooper holds a joint appointment in the departments of Chemistry, Teacher Education, and the CREATE for STEM Institute at Michigan State University. Dr. Cooper applies a Design Research Cycle in the development and assessment of evidence-based curricula to improve the teaching and learning within large-enrollment undergraduate courses. Her current research projects include investigations of the impact of classroom culture on student learning.

UCD Faculty Panelists

Raissa D'Souza 
Engineering

Raissa D'Souza is the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Engineering at UC Davis as well as Professor of Computer Science and of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. She is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science, and an External Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. She received a BS in Physics from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and a PhD in Statistical Physics from MIT, then was a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories and at Microsoft Research. She uses the tools of statistical physics and applied math to reveal the underlying principles of organization in complex systems, with a focus on the interplay of structure and function in network systems. Her research provides insights for real-world systems such as infrastructure networks and social networks, and opportunities to identify tipping points and small interventions to control their self-organizing, collective behaviors. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the Network Science Society, and has received numerous best paper and test-of-time awards, including the inaugural Euler Award of the Network Science Society in 2019. She has served on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals, organized key scientific meetings, was the President of the Network Science Society from 2015-18, and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Complex System

Marit MacArthur
University Writing Program
 

Marit MacArthur (she/her) is a Continuing Lecturer in UWP and has done extensive support for the Writing Across the Curriculum program. Her research on GenAI is informed by a decade’s interdisciplinary, collaborative research with a LLM in digital voice studies. She is series editor for Critical AI on the topic of “GenAI and Teaching Writing in Higher Ed”. Her work on AI appears in Digital Rhetoric Collaborative and Inside Higher Ed and is under review for Bad Ideas about AI and Writing and elsewhere.

Mark Verbitsky
Political Science
 

Mark Verbitsky is an associate professor of teaching in the Political Science department at UC Davis, teaching classes on constitutional law and American political theory. Among his pedagogical interests are teaching students learning skills, including undergraduates as part of the teaching team (learning assistants), and integrating non-knowledge based learning outcomes into his courses. Recent focuses include online learning and the challenges of generative AI.