Professor Lindsay Wheeler is a lecturer in the Chemistry Department and Assistant Director of STEM education innovations in the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). Dr. Wheeler teaches STEM education and higher education courses in the Education School. She previously taught a 1-credit Teaching Methods in Higher Education for chemistry, physics, biology, and astronomy TAs, which will be transformed into asynchronous modular units for TAs to access and integrate into their teaching. She worked with Dr. Charles Grisham to redesign the General Chemistry laboratory curricula (Chem 1411/1611/1421/1621) to a project-based guided inquiry approach where students work collaboratively to design, implement, analyze, and communicate their approach to solving a real-world problem. Dr. Wheeler has also previously taught Chem 1400 using a Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) curriculum. 

Dr. Wheeler’s mixed methods research explores the impact of professional development programs and teaching interventions on instructors’ beliefs, confidence, and practice in undergraduate STEM classrooms. She also investigates the impact of TA training and Teaching Methods courses on TAs’ content knowledge, beliefs, confidence, and instructional practice as well as how these TAs influence the students they teach. Dr. Wheeler is also the PI of a research collaborative across 18 institutions to capture the experiences of educational developers, faculty, and academic leadership during the time of crises.

Dr. Wheeler is active in the science education and educational development professional communities and presents regularly at national and international conferences.  She is Associate Coeditor of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Academic Development. She leads the SoTL Scholars program to empower and enable faculty to engage in classroom-based research and disseminate their findings.

Recent publications:

Cruz, L., Dickens, E., Flaming, A., & Wheeler, L. (Accepted). Under the (compound) microscope: Multiple perspectives on the scholarship of educational development. International Journal of Academic Development.

Favre, D., Bach, D., & Wheeler, L.B. (Accepted). Measuring institutional transformation: A multi-faceted assessment of a new faculty development program. Journal of Research in Innovation Teaching & Learning.

St. Claire, T., Wheeler, L.B., Maeng, J.L., & Bell, R.L. (2020). Mixed-Methods Analysis of Science Teacher Educator Professional Development. Professional Development in Education. DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2020.1787191

Wheeler, L. & Bach, D. (2020). Understanding the Impact of Educational Development Interventions on Classroom Instruction and Student Success. International Journal of Academic Development. DOI:10.1080/1360144X.2020.1777555

Wheeler, L., Palmer, M., & Aneece, I. (2019). Students’ perceptions of course syllabi: The role of syllabi in motivating students. International Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(3), 1-10.

Sturtevant, H. & Wheeler, L. (2019). The STEM Faculty Instructional Barriers and Identity Survey (FIBIS): Development and exploratory results. International Journal of STEM Education, 6(35), 1-22. DOI: 10.1186/s40594-019-0185-0

• Featured on Tea for teaching
• Featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Wheeler, L., Sturtevant, H., & Mumba, F. (2019). An exploratory study of the impact of a Teaching Methods course for International Teaching Assistants in an inquiry-based general chemistry laboratory. Journal of Chemical Education. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b00239

Wheeler, L.B, Mulvey, B.K., Maeng, J.L., Librea-Carden, M.R., & Bell, R. L. (2019). Teaching the Teacher: Exploring STEM Graduate Students’ Nature of Science Conceptions in a Teaching Methods Course. International Journal of Science Education, 41, 1905-1925. DOI: 10.1080/09500693.2019.1647473

Wheeler, L. B., Navy, S. L., Maeng, J.L., & Whitworth, B.A. (2019). Development and Validation of the Classroom Observation Protocol for Engineering Design (COPED). Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 56, 1285-1305.  DOI: 10.1002/tea.21557

Wheeler, L.B., Chiu, J.L., Maeng, J.L., & Bell, R.L (2018). Teaching assistant motivation: Learning to teach in an inquiry-based undergraduate laboratory context. Chemical Education Research and Practice. DOI: 10.1039/c8rp00157j.

Stains, M., Harshman, J., Barker, M.K., Chasteen, S.V., Cole, R., DeChenne-Peters, S.E., Eagan Jr., M.K., Esson, J.M., Knight, J.K., Laski, F.A., Levis-Fitzgerald, M., Lee, C.J., Lo, S.M., McDonnell, L.M., McKay, T.A., Michelotti, N., Musgrove, A., Palmer, M.S., Plank, K.M., Rodela, T.M., Sanders, E.R., Schimpf, N.G., Schulte, P.M., Smith, M.K., Stetzer, M., Van Valkenburgh, B., Vinson, E., Weir, L.K., Wendel, P.J., Wheeler, L.B., Young, A.M. (2018).  Anatomy of STEM teaching in American universities:  A snapshot from a large-scale observation study. Science, 359, 1468-1470. DOI: 10.1126/science.aap8892  

Wheeler, L.B., Maeng, J.L., Chiu, J.L., & Bell, R.L. (2017).  Do teaching assistants matter? Investigating relationships between teaching assistants and student outcomes in undergraduate science laboratory classes. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 54, 463-492.   DOI: 10.1002/tea.21373

Wheeler, L.B., Clark, C.P., & Grisham, C.M. (2017). Transforming a traditional laboratory to an inquiry-based course: Importance of training TAs when redesigning a curriculum.  Journal of Chemical Education, 94, 1019-1026. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00831

Wheeler, L.B., Maeng, J.L., & Whitworth, B.A. (2017).  Teaching assistant (TA) professional development within an inquiry-based general chemistry context: Characterization of TA knowledge and beliefs. Journal of Chemical Education, 94, 19-28.  DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00373

Palmer, M.P., Wheeler, L.B., & Aneece, I.P. (2016).  Does the document matter? The evolving role of syllabi in higher education, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 48 (4), 36-47. DOI: 10.1080/00091383.2016.1198186

Wheeler, L.B., Chiu, J.L., & Grisham, C.M. (2016).  Computational methods in general chemistry: Perceptions of programming, prior experience, and student outcomes.  Journal of College Science Teaching, 45, 3, 83-91.

Wheeler, L.B., Maeng, J.L., & Whitworth, B.A. (2015).  Teaching assistants perceptions of a training to support an inquiry-based general chemistry laboratory course.  Chemical Education Research and Practice, 16, 824-842.  DOI: 10.1039/c5rp00104h