Restoration Ecology
STEM Education
DR. RILEY PIZZA
My research is dual-faceted, with work in restoration ecology and STEM education research. I am excited to work with collaborators on projects in ether of these areas, and look forward to opportunities to do research that spans both these areas. Below, you can read about the work I have done, and am actively doing, in both of these areas.
Restoration Ecology
STEM Education
Students who persist in STEM majors often have high confidence in their biology abilities (self-efficacy) and believe that intelligence can change with effort (growth mindset), compared to those who leave. However, students of color and first-generation students often enter the classroom with lower levels of both. I wanted to test whether a low-impact intervention, introducing the science of neuroplasticity in a large introductory biology lecture, could boost students’ growth mindset and biology self-efficacy. I'm examining the overall impact of this approach and whether its effects differ across demographic groups.
The number of students with disabilities (SWDs) requesting accommodations has grown significantly in the past decade. While standard accommodations exist for traditional lectures, they’re often lacking in active learning and online settings. As a result, implementation frequently depends on instructors’ willingness and ability to adapt. We're interviewing faculty across institutions to understand their values and expectations around providing accommodations, with the goal of developing institution-specific recommendations that better support both instructors and students.
Current Projects
It has long been assumed that obtaining seeds from nearby locations (e.g. local seed sourcing) will produce the most optimal restoration outcomes. These seed sources are assumed to be pre-adapted to restoration site conditions, but that assumption has rarely been tested. Utilizing well-kept records from seed producers across the midwest, I am able to track where seeds are sourced from, and make predictions about how they will perform at a restoration site based on their location. I test these predictions both in the field and in the greenhouse.
Pizza et al., 2023
Research on the impacts of seed sourcing decisions in the field has been variable, with some studies showing seed sourcing decions drive community assembly, and others showing it has no effect. One potential explanaation for this is that conditions at the restoration site (e.g. soils, consumer access, edge efects) can mediate the influences of seed sourcing. However, experiments manipulating both seed sources and site contengies are rare. Thus, my research aims to fill this gap by testing these predictions in existing long term field experiments and field surveys.
Creating restorations that will persist into the future is a critical goal of restoration ecology. While local seed sources may be pre-adapted to current site conditions, they may be unable to adapt as the climate gets warmer. It may instead be beneficial to get seeds from climates that we expect the restoration site to experience in the future ("climage-adjusted provenancing"). However, if these seeds are too maladapted to current conditions, they may be unable to establish and ultimately prevent restoration success. I am conducting a field survey that compares mutliple seed sourcing strategies to one another under natural field conditions and under simulated climate change to answer these questions.