Betsy McIntosh, Ph.D.

As Associate Director of LA Development, Betsy leads professional development for LAs from their first semester through participation as Returning LAs, LA Mentors, and student researchers for the LA Program. She focuses on connecting the various communities within the LA Program to one another to create a cohesive teaching and learning experience for LAs, Faculty, and LA Program staff. 
 
Betsy is passionate about drawing connections across disciplines and improving educational access and outcomes for all students. Her educational degrees span biochemistry, chemistry, and biophysics, with a doctorate in Cell and Molecular Biology from University of Pennsylvania. During her undergraduate and graduate work, Betsy concurrently pursued her passion for informal science education as a tool for improving access to quality science education through organizations such as Saturday Science Academies, after school programs, summer camps, and volunteering at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. This inspired Betsy to seek training in Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching and formally make the transition towards education research and helping others learn to teach with postdocs in Genetics Education Research and with the Learning Assistant Program. Since 2018, Betsy has been the CU Boulder Learning Assistant Pedagogy Course Coordinator, leading the instructional team, co-developing resources and lessons to meet the needs of New and Returning LAs spanning STEM, Social Science, and Humanities fields at CU Boulder and FRCC, planning and running LA events (orientation, info session, poster session), helping develop and support the Returning LA Professional Development and LA Mentor Programs, providing feedback to faculty to help them optimize their work with LAs, innovating in remote/online education, and sharing ideas and materials with LA programs near and far at the regional and International LA Alliance conferences.