Biography

Jacqueline McLaughlin is best known for her endless enthusiasm for science, tireless devotion to conservation, and fervent passion for teaching and undergraduate research. She is an Associate Professor of Biology at Penn State Lehigh Valley where she has been educating undergraduates both formally (classroom) and informally (in the field) for nearly 25 years. She earned her Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from Rutgers University/University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (Piscataway, NJ), M.S. in Cell and Developmental Biology from Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL), and B.A. in Biology/Chemistry from New College (Sarasota, FL). To her credit, she is the Founding Director of Connecting Humans and Nature through Conservation Experiences (CHANCE), Penn State’s award-winning, international environmental education program with over 50 governmental, non-governmental, academic and corporate partners and/or collaborators around the world. She has developed and led research intense, study abroad programs to Alaska, Australia, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, Panama, Peru, and Tanzania (and soon Bolivia). She has been bestowed numerous awards for her excellence in teaching, research, and service including the most recent 2017 Higher Education Environmental Educator of the Year from the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE) and a 2019 term as a National Academies Jefferson Science Fellow, serving as a science advisor to the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) to the United States Department of State. For the last ten years, she has also been a visiting professor at Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China in the College of Civil and Environmental Engineering. As a scholar, she has published, as an author or editor, over 65 publications in books, journals, proceedings, and online environments. Through her research in biology education, she has been an active voice for the NSF/AAAS Vision and Change movement in undergraduate biology education through an NSF TUES grant award; a creator of effective CUREs (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences) for our nation’s undergraduate biology laboratories; and, a mentor to copious faculty, both national and international, in various professional development realms.