Instructor Spotlight: Dr. Amanda Rosenzweig, Delgado Community College

Written by Victoria Guzzo • October 29, 2024 •  2 min read
Instructor Spotlight: Dr. Amanda Rosenzweig, Delgado Community College Featured Image

Dr. Amanda Rosenzweig Shares Best Practices for Expanding Access & Equity at Delgado Community College

Delgado Community College is a public community college in Louisiana, with campuses throughout the New Orleans metropolitan area. The College provides first and second year foundational biological, allied health, engineering technology, and physical science courses that prepare students for careers in the sciences and science related technology fields and for continuing their science education at a four-year institution. 

About Dr. Amanda Rosenzweig, ‘Inclusive Educator of the Year’

Amanda Rosenzweig, PhD, is the Assistant Dean of STEM at Delgado Community College, Canvas administrator, a meritorious professor of biology, and the director of Science Teacher Technology Training. She also created Teach and Learn/eProfessor, a multi-course series that focuses on online course development. 

She teaches hybrid, blended and fully online biology, microbiology, anatomy & physiology, chemistry, forensics, and physical science courses with at least 20 students per section—more than 200 per term including a mix of majors and non-majors. In addition to her administrator duties, she is an educator to her core, remaining wholly committed to improving access and equity for all students, regardless of their different abilities, financial status, and life circumstances. 

Most recently, Dr. Rosenzweig was named Inclusive Educator of the Year, representing the category of Expanding Access & Equity as part of the 2024 Golden Goggles awards.

Tips for Expanding Access & Ensuring an Equitable Learning Experience

Dr. R, as she is known to her students, makes sure to implement a variety of tools, both in person and online, including hands-on tools, videos, and field trips. She strives for full ADA compliance not only for her own classes, but for her department’s courses as well, regularly offering ADA compliance webinars and training to help faculty deliver their material to the under-served communities of New Orleans. Dr. R also works with incarcerated students to help them get certifications and degrees, to give them a leg up when they reenter the workforce.

When it comes to access and equity, Dr. Rosenzweig recommends keeping flexibility top of mind, delivering highly effective and authentic lab courses in ways that are inclusive of broader student populations.

She considers these three areas core to ensuring an accessible and equitable experience across student populations.

Consider Student Needs

Dr. R’s students take labs online for a variety of reasons, including having to balance studies with medical challenges, employment, military deployments, child rearing and transportation issues, which is why she is sure to:

  • Meet students where they are, and not where we want them to be.  Even if a student requires more attention or resources or perhaps online learning isn’t the best format for them, it’s imperative to provide them with a positive, effective learning experience that supports engaging, hands-on practices.

Ensure Course Consistency

Creating a consistent, high-quality experience across formats, whether online or in-person, as well as sections matters. Just because you’re delivering your lab online doesn’t mean curriculum or learning objectives should be different. Focus on building course goals and learning objectives that can be done from anywhere, whether in a lab or at home. 

  • Use high-quality curriculum that allows students to gain the knowledge and skills needed to achieve course competencies. Consider using templates for all of your sections that include consistent branding and are ADA compliant. What’s more, all of your core content should be similar and shared to all sections. Have some embedded in Science Interactive’s lab management platform and focus on pre-lab effectiveness and preparedness for moving into the three Es on SI platform.
  • Add to and personalize as needed but be sure to include vocabulary lists, interactive videos, worksheets, quizzes, and labeling activities so you’re setting students up for success.

As one DCC student shared, “The hands-on components were great! The instructions were step-by-step and I felt like I was gaining a lot of experience and knowledge regarding the subject. All of the labs were very good at explaining our hands-on tasks and even the rat dissection was an amazing experience to learn so much from.”

Invest in Instructor Support

Just as students need support, so do instructors teaching online labs. 

  • Leverage in-house staff and your Science Interactive partners for support, videos that walk you through hands-on experiments, checklist resources, and time management schedules. Things like this will help you streamline course management. 
“Whether known or not, nearly 1 in 5 college students may have a disability that affects accessibility. This is close to my heart, and my goal is to design courses that anticipate the diversity of students that may enroll in it. And to do this, we often look at universal design principles to enhance the usability, taking into account disability, number of students, and the mix of majors and non-majors so that we can always be improving the access and experience for students.”
-Dr. Amanda Rosenzweig, Delgado Community College

For more tips and best practices on expanding access and equity, check out our Peer Learning webinar on demand.