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Dr. Laura Burrus, San Francisco State University

Laura Burrus was trained at the College of William & Mary (BS, 1986), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD, 1991) and Harvard University (Post-doc, 1996) prior to being hired by San Francisco State University in 1997. She is now the first female chair of the Biology Department. Her research, which has been funded by NIH, NSF and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, is focused on identifying the biochemical and cellular mechanisms underlying Wnt gradient formation in chick embryos. Dr. Burrus is also the co-director of an HHMI grant, which aims to increase the retention and graduation of culturally diverse students by introducing inclusive teaching efforts in upper division biology courses. She has taught across the curriculum; her most recent teaching efforts were directed at incorporating student centered learning strategies into a large Introductory Biology course and a small graduate level Cancer Biology course. She aspires to actively foster the inclusion of students from under-represented backgrounds in the lab and in the classroom. As one of five LGBTQIA biology faculty in the Dept of Biology at SFSU, she brings unique perspectives and recently collaborated on research published in 2015 exploring how biology faculty language used in classrooms may influence feelings of inclusivity.