Carrie Shepler Director, Freshman Chemistry Academic Professional Office: Clough Commons 584A Phone: 404-385-1342 Fax: 404-894-1332 E-mail Carrie Shepler

B.S., Georgetown College, 2000; Ph.D., Washington State University, 2005; Post-doctoral experience, Washington State University 2005-2006 and University of Georgia 2006-2008

 

Responsibilities

Carrie brings to the Freshman Chemistry Program multi-disciplinary educational background and training.  As an undergraduate, she double majored in chemistry and communication arts.  Her graduate work in uranium biogeochemistry provided experience in analytical chemistry, radiochemistry, mineralogy, and microbiology before she turned her attention to chemical education as a post-doctoral fellow.  As Director of the Freshman Chemistry Program, Carrie's responsibilities include co-chairing the Freshman Chemistry Committee, providing administrative supervision and support for the Freshman Program, teaching freshman chemistry courses, planning of assessment and feedback, pedagogical development, and coordination and training of teaching assistants.  Carrie also serves as an academic advisor, is the faculty advisor for Georgia Tech chapter of the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society, teaches freshman seminar for chemistry and biochemistry majors, and she supports FASET programming and prospective student information sessions for the department

Teaching Interests

In the past, Carrie taught multiple sections of General Chemistry (CHEM 1310).  She was very involved in the recent restructuring of the program serving as leader of the Chemical Principles I (CHEM 1211K) development team, and she will teach all three new courses (CHEM 1310, CHEM 1211K, and CHEM 1212K) in the future. 

Carrie also teaches Freshman Seminar (GT 1000) sections for chemistry and biochemistry majors each fall.  The course serves as an introduction to college life, but Carrie also emphasizes opportunities available within the department and attempts to help establish a sense of community for the new students.   With Drs. David Collard and Cameron Tyson, Carrie also serves as instructor for the department's newly developed Sophomore Seminar course (CHEM 2802, to become CHEM 2000) which focuses on scientific ethics, literature searches, writing and reading scientific literature, and career exploration and preparation.

Carrie has also taught part of a special topics course in radiochemistry, and she is interested in the development of other special topics courses in areas such as food chemistry.

Scholarship

As a teaching post-doctoral fellow Carrie studied the problem-solving strategies of freshman chemistry students using a semi-structured interview protocol and statistical analysis to determine whether students still demonstrate a gap in conceptual versus algorithmic understanding more than a decade after the phenomenon was first identified in the literature. The long-term goal of the research is to determine how the thought processes of students who excel in both areas differ from those who do not and how best to transfer that knowledge.  She has continued examining the cognitive skills of freshman chemistry students at Tech through projects focusing on group preparation of chapter outlines and documented problem solving in lecture.  Carrie looks forward to working with Success Programs with the newly implemented PLUS program that focuses on peer led learning.