Sonia Underwood

Sonia Underwood joined FIU in January 2016 after working as a Research Associate at Michigan State University in the area of chemistry education research. Prior to that, she received her PhD in Chemistry focused on chemistry education from Clemson University. Underwood's research area is focused on implementing and assessing curriculum transformation efforts using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Research Areas

• Chemistry education
• Better understanding how students learn to develop their chemistry knowledge as well as how they relate this knowledge for their other science courses

The three research projects currently ongoing are:

• Developing assessment measures to determine the impact of curriculum transformations.
• Investigating the ways in which students use a chemical structure (i.e. Lewis structure) to predict a compound's macroscopic properties (i.e. reactivity and acidity/basicity).
• Exploring the connections students make between their chemistry, biology, and physics courses.

Education

• BS - University of Central Florida
• PhD - Clemson University
• Postdoctoral Fellowship - Clemson University
• Research Associate - Michigan State University