Alumni
Dr. Morgan Balabanoff
Dr. Morgan Balabanoff worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Moon group from 2020 until January of 2022. During her time with the group, she investigated students' understanding of light-matter interactions and developed the Water Instrument, a comprehensive measurement of student's foundational general chemistry concepts.
Dr. Balabanoff is now a faculty member the University of Louisville, where her research group works to develop assessment instruments and qualitatively investigate students' understanding of atomic structure.
Dr. Stephanie Berg
Dr. Stephanie Berg completed her PhD studies with the Moon group in May of 2024. Her dissertation work was focused on characterizing and developing chemistry students' data analysis and interpretation competencies in post-secondary contexts. ​Upon completion of her PhD, Dr. Berg was awarded a NSF STEMEdIPRF to investigate science identities of disabled STEM graduate students. She is now at the University of Mississippi working with Dr. Mariel Pfeifer in the biology department.
Archer Harrold
Archer was a member of the Moon Group from 2018 to 2022, where he worked with to investigate students' understanding of various light-matter interactions with Dr. Moon and Dr. Balabanoff. Specifically, his work focused on understanding how students reasoned about the double-slit experiment and photoelectric effect.
Currently, Archer is at the University of Michigan working with Dr. Ginger Shultz to investigate POGIL activities in a general chemistry setting and Culturally Responsive Teaching practices in local contexts.
Rachael Mayhew
Rachael was a previous NSF REU student in the Moon Group in the summer of 2021. During her time with the group, Rachael worked on developing novel tasks to elicit student's science practice competencies and developed coding schemes for analyzing student responses to such tasks.
She is now at Portland State University, where she works with Jack Barbera to explore connections between students' goals and engagement and use of online homework systems.
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Shikshya Bhusal
Shikshya worked as an undergraduate researcher at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln with the Moon group. During her time with the group, she assessed students' scientific argumentation and evaluated their peer review comments and revisions. Additionally, she conducted qualitative and quantitative studies to investigate students' understanding of the photoelectric effect.
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Shikshya is now at the University of North Texas where she is pursuing her PhD in computational chemistry. Her research focuses on targeted protein degradation (TPD), utilizing advanced computational tools and enhanced sampling methods to explore the conformational dynamics of TPD systems.
Amelie Cole
Amelie joined the Moon group in the Spring of 2022, where she worked on the light-matter interaction project, specifically focusing on how students understand UV/Vis Spectroscopy. After this project, Amelie then moved to looking at how students manage epistemic uncertainty when engaging in group argumentation.
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During her time with the group, Amelie earned authorship on multiple projects and received the University of Nebraska - Lincoln's Undergraduate Researcher Award. She now works at a chemical and materials producer company in Lincoln where she focuses on sustainability.
Danny Vinton
Danny Vinton joined the Moon group in the Spring of 2023, where he worked to investigate how students engage with feedback that is received from other students during peer review. During his time with the group, Danny worked to clean and organize interview transcripts and qualitatively analyze said interview transcripts.
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Danny is now a senior undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. In addition to his studies, he also works with international graduate TA's to help prepare and support their teaching practices across the university.
Ashlyn Torneten
Ashlyn joined the Moon group in the Spring of 2023, where she worked to investigate how students engaged with and navigated peer work and peer feedback during peer review. In her time with the group, Ashlyn cleaned, organized, and qualitatively analyzed students' written work alongside fellow undergraduate researcher, Olivia.
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She now works at Phibro Animal Health in Omaha.
Olivia Pereira
Olivia joined the Moon group in the Fall of 2023, where she worked to investigate how students engaged with and navigated peer work and peer feedback during peer review. In her time with the group, Olivia organized and qualitatively analyzed students' written work alongside her fellow undergraduate researcher, Ashlyn.
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She is now a senior undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln and will start medical school soon after graduation.
Ben Moritz
Ben joined the Moon group in the summer of 2022 as a NSF REU student from Benedictine College. During that summer, he worked on developing a rubric to characterize students' engagement with epistemic uncertainty and earned his first research publication. He was also awarded one of the top research presentation awards during the research symposium held at the end of the summer.
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Ben now works as a science teacher in Minnesota.
