Laura Lukes
University of British Columbia
Assistant Professor
Laura is a geologist, geoscience education researcher, and faculty developer, currently serving as an Assistant Professor in Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at University of British Columbia (Canada). She formerly served as the Assistant Director of the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning (2014-2021). She is the incoming chair of POD's SoTL SIG and is in the process of rotating off as the lead of the SoTL Collaboratory, a regional faculty developer community of practice centered on supporting SoTL at and across institutions. Her research focuses on how learning environments, teaching practices, and beliefs influence the strategies and tactics students use to manage their own learning in classroom settings (self-regulated models of learning). Laura is an award-winning educator who has experience teaching in a variety of settings (university, community college, K-12, informal, in the field, in person, online) and class sizes (6-95). She also has experience collaborating with faculty and providing training for graduate students in how to incorporate active learning methods into their classrooms.
Prior to joining the Stearns Center in June 2014, she served as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Office of Polar Programs. During this time, she served as Director of the Joint Science Education Project (JSEP), an internationally-collaborative field science research experience on the Greenland ice sheet for students and teachers from Greenland, Denmark, and the US. Laura continues to be an active leader in the national and international geoscience education communities. She served as the founding President of the Geoscience Education Research Division (GER) of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) and the chair of the Education Committee of the Geological Society of America (GSA). She received the 2017 Biggs Award for Earth Science Teaching from the Geological Society of America.
She has served as the ITL Conference Director from 2014-2021.