Kathy M. Takayama, Ph.D.

Director, Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching & Learning
Adjunct Associate Professor, Bio - MCB

Phone: (401) 863-1141
Kathy_Takayama@Brown.edu

Kathy Takayama holds a B.S. in Biology from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from UMDNJ–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (formerly Rutgers Medical School). She was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1994 she moved down under to the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia as an Australian Research Council Senior Research Associate. Her research interests have focused on how RNA processing mechanisms control the regulation of gene expression in a wide variety of biological systems, including frogs (Xenopus), viruses, and bacteria. Kathy became a faculty member of the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at UNSW in 2001, where she continued to investigate how RNA processing controlled bacterial stress responses; at the same time, she developed an active research program in science education and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). In 2007, she joined the Sheridan Center as the Associate Director for Life & Physical Sciences, and was appointed Director of the Center in 2010.

Kathy’s commitment to teaching and her work in the scholarship of teaching and learning have been recognized nationally and internationally. She was a Carnegie Scholar from 2003 – 2004, and is a recipient of the David White Award for Excellence in Teaching (Australian Society for Microbiology), the Australian College of Educators Teaching Award, and the University of New South Wales Vice Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence. She is a founding member of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and served as the Society’s first Regional Vice President (Australasia). She was elected to Chair the 4th ISSOTL Conference in Sydney in 2007. She has delivered keynotes on her work in visualizations and learning in the sciences; collaborative online communities, the integration of art + science in teaching; and interdisciplinary pedagogies in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Her arts-science collaboration with Sydney-based sculptor John Nicholson (“The Symbiotic Bacterial Light Project: Luxcorp”) has been exhibited at the Canberra Contemporary Arts Space gallery in Australia’s capital city and was featured in the journal Nature. Kathy serves on the Steering Committee of the National Science Foundation Biology Scholars Program, and Co-Chairs the NSF Biology Scholars SoTL Transitions Residency. In 2008 she was named National Academies Education Fellow in the Life Sciences by the National Research Council. She serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and is the Research Editor for the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education. In 2011, she received a grant for the Sheridan Center (in collaboration with Dartmouth’s Center for the Advancement of Learning) from the Teagle Foundation to engage faculty and departments in developing evidence-based courses and curricula to enhance student learning.