Dr. Katie Farnsworth, along with Dr. Tim Nuttle of the Biology Department, received a 2009 IUP Academic Excellence and Innovation Award.
They were awarded one of the eight awards for their proposal "Improving Systems-Based Reasoning in Students Across Disciplines by Using Qualitative Reasoning Models.” The project aims to develop and bring to the classroom models that can be used by students to develop more fully their understanding of causal relationships in complex systems—for example, climate change. One of the main tenets of science education is instilling an understanding of causal theories of phenomena, including what happened when and what caused something to happen.
