Darby Feldwinn received her PhD from UCSD, where she worked in Dr. Andrew Kummel's laboratory researching oxides/IIIV semiconductor interfaces. During her graduate career she first took an interest in teaching and won the teaching assistant excellence award. After graduating she stayed on at UCSD for an additional year as a postdoc where she continued her research and taught general chemistry. Darby joined the UCSB faculty in 2009.
Research
Darby co-founded and directs the elementary (2nd - 6th grades) portion of the SciTrek (scitrek.chem.ucsb.edu) program. SciTrek was founded in 2010 and is a 2nd-12th grade outreach program that carries out long-term inquiry investigations with students. In addition, it provides professional development for teachers to increase their comfort with leading inquiry based science in the classroom. As program director, she writes all of the SciTrek curriculum, leads professional development workshops for teachers and volunteers, facilitates SciTrek modules in local classrooms, and oversees the research being carried out on the program.
In addition, Darby is the director of the South Coast Science Project (SCSP; https://scsp.chem.ucsb.edu/) which provided science professional development to transitional Kindergarten - 6th grade teachers.
Her research has a two-fold focus: First, on how the SciTrek program affects students’ attitudes toward science, as well as their understanding of scientific practices (ex: writing conclusions), and second, on how teachers' understanding of teaching the NGSS changes over the course of participation in the SciTrek and SCSP programs.
Select Research Publications
R.T. Helsel, S. Lambert, L. Dickerson, J. Strelich, V. Woods, D. Feldwinn "Design of a Phenomenon-Based Science Outreach Program and its Effects on Elementary Students’ Epistemological Understanding of, and Attitudes Toward, Science," Sch. Sci. Math 122, 74-85 (2021)
Education
- Ph.D., Chemistry, University of California, San Diego
Courses Taught
- ENV S 136: Green Works - Exploring Technology/Sustainability