We are pleased to announce our inaugural C-Hub Visiting Fellow, Dr. Taralyn (Tari) Tan.

A university that maximally benefits from its diverse community places paramount importance on expanding its insights toward creating inclusive classrooms and research environments. For a creative, courageous institution like OIST, it is crucial for our students, faculty, researchers, and administrators to engage with bold international educators and innovators. C-Hub’s Visiting Fellow Program fosters exchange and synthesis in collaboration with distinguished educators and experts across the world. Visiting Fellows present seminars or workshops, and engage in discussions with the OIST community on topics of relevance to C-Hub’s mission. Visiting Fellows also have the opportunity to collaborate with C-Hub on a project or program that will benefit the OIST community and extend our capacity toward supporting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

This brownbag session will introduce educators to tools and practical tips for creating effective and engaging online learning environments using the Zoom platform. Attendees will leave this session with actionable suggestions that they can immediately implement into their own online teaching.

This interactive workshop will begin with Dr. Tan framing the current state of gender equity in STEM, including progress that has been made, challenges that remain, and efforts to support women in STEM. In the second part of the workshop, C-Hub Director Dr. Kathy Takayama will guide us in using a systems thinking approach to collaboratively identify concrete pathways towards change within the local OIST environment and beyond. Workshop participants will leave this session with stronger social and professional connections with colleagues and with greater awareness of local and global challenges and priorities for improving gender equity in STEM.

During this brownbag session, Dr. Tan will describe her professional journey from graduate school studying neuroscience to her current position in higher education leadership. She will discuss some of the work that she does and will offer advice to trainees interested in further exploring career opportunities in the teaching / higher education administration space. Dr. Tan will be joined by Dr. Ian McLachlan, a Scientist at the Boston area-based Rgenta Therapeutics, who will similarly describe his career trajectory and his work in the biotech industry. Dr. McLachlan earned his PhD in Neurobiology at Harvard University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at MIT before beginning his current role at Rgenta.

This interactive workshop will introduce approaches to facilitate inclusion, equity, and belonging in classroom, laboratory, and institutional training contexts. Workshop attendees will leave this session equipped with knowledge of evidence-based practices to promote equity, inclusion, and belonging and ideas for how to implement some of those practices within their local training environments.

Come learn how to communicate your impactful ideas visually and engage audiences with poster presentations, an important skill set not only for scientists, but for all presenters! Poster presentations are an interactive, effective format for showcasing research or sharing ideas, programs, and projects.