Sheila S. Jaswal

Sheila received her B.A. in German and Biochemistry from Mills College, where her experiences in women-only classrooms and laboratories provided an opportunity to learn and lead in science settings in the absence of gender-based implicit bias and stereotype threat. While earning her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California at San Francisco, she co-led a middle school girls’ science club for a year through the NSF-supported “Triad Project” of the UCSF Science Education Partnership. Under the tutelage of Liesl Chatman, Kimberly Tanner and colleagues, she experienced the transformative power of experiential and active learning coupled with metacognitive reflection on the part of the learners and the educators. As a Professor in the Chemistry Department and Program in Biophysics and Biochemistry at Amherst College, she partners with a team of undergraduate researchers to study the interplay between protein stability, dynamics and function using a combined biophysical and computational approach. She has published this work widely, in journals such as Protein Science and The Journal of Physical Chemistry. Since co-founding the “Being Human in STEM” (HSTEM) Initiative in 2016, Sheila has coordinateed HSTEM activities at the college and national scale: She co-facilitates the HSTEM course in collaboration with students, staff and faculty colleagues, organizes campus and regional HSTEM events, gives talks and workshops at colleges, universities and conferences nationwide, oversees a growing HSTEM network and collaborators at other institutions, and shares curricular and other HSTEM resources at www.beinghumaninstem.com.