About

Jennifer Saltzman is the Assistant Dean for Experiential Education at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability within the Earth Systems Program. She is based at Stanford University, located in the Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building. Her role involves overseeing experiential education initiatives, contributing to the development of students' practical and applied learning experiences in sustainability and earth systems. Her contact information includes a phone number (650) 725-2410 and an email address saltzman@stanford.edu. She is actively involved in supporting students and faculty within the Earth Systems Program and the broader sustainability community at Stanford.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Pedagogy
• Developmental psychology
• Earth science

Selected publications

• Bright STaRS: Bright Students Training as Research Scientists I Posters

  2019-12-12

  article1st authorCorresponding

• SUMMER PALEOBIOLOGY RESEARCH EXPERIENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2018-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• USING AN AUTHENTIC SUMMER RESEARCH EXPERIENCE TO IMPROVE SCIENCE LITERACY AND EARTH SCIENCE AWARENESS

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2016-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Initial study of neutral post-instruction responses on the Maryland Physics Expectation Survey

  Physical Review Physics Education Research · 2016-04-07 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Epistemological studies generally focus on how students think about their construction of knowledge compared to how experts think about the same ideas. Instruments such as the MPEX and CLASS use a Likert scale to gauge whether students agree or disagree with how experts think about the same ideas. During analysis, five point scale responses are typically reduced to favorable, neutral, and unfavorable with neutral being treated as a nonresponse. What if students are actively selecting neutral and not treating it as a "does not apply?" To address this question we chose to analyze the postinstruction neutral responses of students in our Physics I course using data from multiple years, multiple sections, and multiple instructors. We found that classroom average postinstruction neutral responses were consistently within a band of 15%-25% and that this was also consistent with other published results. It is not yet clear what this pattern means. Is this a measure of students receiving mixed messages from instructors or a measure of a transitional stage that students go through when learning how to be a good college physics student? These initial findings are interesting enough that we are presenting them here with a more detailed question-byquestion analysis to be published in the near future. For example, high levels of neutral responses to applied questions (e.g., "All I need to do is. ") may indicate that students are receiving mixed messages from instructors. On the other hand, high levels of neutral responses to conceptual questions (e.g., "Knowledge in physics") may indicate that students are in a transitional stage between novice and expert.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improving Science Literacy and Earth Science Awareness Through an Intensive Summer Research Experience in Paleobiology

  AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts · 2014-12-15

  article
  Publisher

• Supporting and Understanding Students' Epistemological Discourse About Climate Change

  Journal of Geoscience Education · 2014-09-02 · 44 citations

  article

  The climate change community has begun to look carefully at how the public understands, or fails to understand, climate change and the scientific claims made based on data. This study focuses on how teachers provide scaffolding that supports students' understanding of, not only how climate systems work or the causes and effects of climate change, but also how we know what we know. Stanford's Global Climate Change: Professional Development for K–12 Teachers project provided teacher professional development on the science of global climate change, curricular materials, and pedagogical strategies. We conducted an in-depth study of the classrooms of the participating teachers. Our results show statistically significant gains from pre- to postassessment in students' content knowledge and a shift in their opinions about climate change. These gains are positively related to the percentage of students who are engaged and interacting, and negatively related to the percentage of students who are disengaged. Through classroom observations and video recordings, we identify how teachers and students talk about how we know about climate change, and we discuss how that talk can be enhanced.

  PublisherDOI

• Engaging High School Youth in Paleobiology Research

  AGUFM · 2013-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Geoscience Outreach Education with the Local Community

  Innovations in science education and technology · 2013-07-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• From WHAT We Know to HOW We Know It: Students Talk about Climate Change

  AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts · 2012-12-01

  article
  Publisher

• Middle and high school students shine

  Eos · 2012-02-28 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Middle and high school students participating in after‐school and summer research experiences in the Earth and space sciences are invited to participate in AGU's Bright Students Training as Research Scientists (Bright STaRS) program. The Bright STaRS program provides a dedicated forum for these students to present their research results to the scientific community at AGU's Fall Meeting, where they can also learn about exciting research, education, and career opportunities in the Earth and space sciences. Last year's program included 33 abstracts from middle and high school students involved with the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences; Raising Interest in Science and Engineering summer internship program sponsored by the Office of Science Outreach at Stanford; Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Cruz; California Academy of Science; San Francisco State University; the University of Arizona; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Their work spanned a variety of topics ranging from structural geology and paleontology to environmental geology and polar science. Nearly 100 Bright STaRS students presented their research posters on Thursday morning (8 December) of the Fall Meeting and had a chance to interact with scientists, AGU staff, and other meeting attendees.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Noel A. Heim

  4 shared

• Nicole Holthuis

  3 shared

• Rachel A. Lotan

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• Mark R. Leary

  Duke University

  3 shared

• Jonathan L. Payne

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• Andrew Wild

  Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

  2 shared

• John C. Georgeson

  2 shared

• Mary Lou Smith

  Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics

  2 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI