Biography

Connelly has been on the TH Gosnell School of Life Sciences faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology since 2007, and has over 18 years of experience in higher education. Connelly's learning spaces are highly varied, from small research-focused groups, to large 250-student lectures of non-majors, to 75-student flipped/hybrid-style, to fully online lecture and laboratory courses of 50+ students. This variety has allowed her to develop tools that are universal across her varied learning spaces, and to fine tune those tools with a focus on accessibility and leveling the playing field - thus learning biology becomes a journey and not a requirement. Her focus on student inclusive learning has won her local and international awards for teaching and her work with Deaf and hard-of-hearing students in and out of the traditional classroom has been recognized nationally. She continues to develop new techniques and implement new tools that will aid not only her Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, but all students for whom higher education poses unique challenges. All student needs and experiences in education are not universal, but providing variable paths will afford all students an opportunity to do what it takes to succeed.