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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Sarah Eddy, a graduate student at Oregon State University, is one of only eight students in the nation to receive the K. Patricia Cross Award.

The award, presented by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, is given to people who display leadership in teaching, civic engagement, and improving the campus culture around teaching.

Although majoring in zoology, Eddy also researched effective teaching practices for the science classroom. She designed and taught three graduate level seminars on science pedagogy and developing outreach activities. She co-founded Broader Impacts and Outreach by Graduate Students, or BIO-GradS, a group that provides workshops to help high school students learn about biology.

"This work is important and really rewarding," Eddy said. "We don't always convey the exciting parts of biology that can make students more driven to learn. You have to show what you can actually do with learning."

In continuing work, Eddy hopes to identify, through large scale classroom experiments, science teaching methods and curriculum that increase retention and learning of at-risk students.