Improving STEM Course Design, Teaching, and Student Success
Justin Shaffer partners with STEM programs to offer workshops and keynotes to help faculty improve their toughest teaching challenges. Justin also prepares the next generation of STEM educators for teaching faculty careers. Backed by 14+ years of experience having taught 10,000+ students, published education research, and a sincere belief that STEM education can be fun, work with Justin to improve STEM education together.
Trusted by STEM departments and faculty across the country
Justin offers two types of engaging workshops depending on your needs
For departments and faculty
STEM Course Redesigns: From High DFW Rates to High Engagement
For departments ready to help their faculty improve their teaching and tackle their highest-DFW courses using evidence-based strategies, proven from use in a 440-student intro biology course to quantitatively-focused engineering courses.
For graduate students and postdocs
From Experimenter to Educator: STEM Teaching Faculty Careers
For graduate students and postdocs exploring STEM teaching faculty careers. Hands-on workshops covering the teaching faculty landscape, application materials, and teaching demos backed by 14+ years of experience on the job.
"Justin is a dynamic and engaging speaker. The workshop highlighted practical, straightforward methods to engage students more effectively. He coupled his expertise in pedagogy with compelling data on the effectiveness of these techniques. Justin was able to engage a large group of faculty from a variety of disparate disciplines and provide them all with relevant skills. Our faculty walked away inspired as well as prepared to transform their courses into high structure learning environments. I would definitely recommend him!"
Jamie Jensen, Professor of Biology, BYU
"I appreciate Justin's facilitating our move forward and improving our curriculum. Many of our faculty have never gone through this type of process, so Justin not only helped us design courses that will provide a better educational experience but educated our faculty as well. Justin helped us improve both faculty and student success. We are excited about these courses."
Robert Dearth, Founding Director and Professor, School of Integrative Biological and Chemical Sciences, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Want to get started now?
A practical guide
High Structure Course Design Book
Justin’s book from the Macmillan Learning Scientific Teaching Series (released in June 2025) walks the reader through all of the steps necessary to create, implement, and assess a high structure STEM course.
Hands-on with course design
Alignment: A Course Design Card Deck
Course design can be difficult but with practice comes better course designs and thus better student outcomes. Introducing Alignment: A Course Design Card Deck which Justin designed to help give instructors practice at designing courses via aligning assessments and activities to learning objectives and tailoring this process to specific course design situations and figuring out how to overcome barriers.
support your students
Practice: A Student Success Card Deck
In order to become great at anything in life, practice is universally required and being a great student is no exception. Introducing Practice: A Student Success Card Deck which Justin designed to help give high school and college students a way to explore effective study strategies and how to apply them to a variety of courses and topics. Additionally, this deck will help students learn how to overcome barriers to studying and pursue overarching skills that will lead to success.
Tips and Tricks and advice
Recombinant Teaching Podcast
This is not your typical higher ed interview podcast; rather, Recombinant Teaching: STEM Education Office Hours is all about YOU and the questions that you have related to STEM pedagogy, student success, academic careers, and everything in between.
engaging classroom materials
STEM Teaching Materials
Check out many of Justin's own teaching materials including reading guides, case studies, authentic assessments, and more. Feel free to use these for your own purposes and contact Justin if you have any questions!
Upcoming Events
Catch Justin at these events and reach out to book your own.
| Date | Host | Event |
|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | Colorado State University | Maximizing student engagement with modern iClicker questions and peer instruction |
| August 2026 | Colorado State University | Saving time with grading: Getting started with Gradescope |
| August 2026 | Delaware Technical Community College | Gateway chemistry redesign and alignment workshop |
| August 2026 | Innovative Educators | Creating engaging and effective courses to promote student success |
| November 2026 | ChemEdX | Promoting student success in gateway chemistry courses |
"Please invite Justin to consult with you or your faculty! He’s invested in continuous improvement and evidence-based methods, skilled at translating research to practice, and will renew your excitement for classroom teaching. He’s a rare-find and a gem; consistently delivering the highest quality work while also tending to his students' and coworkers' needs."
Sarah Bodbyl, Associate Dean, Van Andel Institute Graduate School
about Justin
Dr. Justin Shaffer is the Founder of Recombinant Education, the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, and a Teaching Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering and in Quantitative Biosciences and Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Justin has been a university STEM professor, discipline-based education researcher, and faculty and student mentor since 2012. Over the past 14+ years, Justin has taught 10,000+ students using evidence-based pedagogies at a variety of institutions in several disciplines and formats and has worked with faculty to add evidence-based practices to their courses via workshops and 1:1 consulting.
STEM Course Redesigns: From High DFW Rates to High Engagement
Introductory biology, general chemistry, calculus I, thermodynamics, materials and energy balances - whatever your program's toughest foundational course is, it's probably also your biggest retention risk. Justin partners with departments to give you the tools to redesign these courses using evidence-based, student-centered teaching practices, backed by his own published classroom research and 14+ years of experience. Justin has done this in a 440-student intro biology lecture, a human anatomy lab course, and numerically-dense chemical engineering courses, face-to-face and online.
Standard Workshops
Ready-to-go engaging sessions built from 14+ years of experience in the trenches using evidence-based strategies: writing and using learning objectives, active learning at any class size, assessment design for both in-class and out-of-class, and practical templates and tips your faculty can start using immediately.
Data-Driven Workshops
Justin first evaluates your program's current teaching practices and student outcomes using validated instruments from the STEM education literature. Justin then customizes the standard workshops specifically around what that data reveals in order to completely tailor the experience and materials for you and your faculty.
Workshop Formats
Length: From 60 minutes to a full day of programming designed to fit your audience and needsModality: In-person on your campus or on ZoomAudience size: No limit - the more the merrier!All workshops come with a 60-minute Zoom Q&A scheduled as a follow-up
Additional offerings
Justin also offers workshops, seminars, and keynotes on a variety of other topics related to curriculum and course design, evidence-based instructional practices, and discipline-based education research. Let Justin know what you are interested in and he will make it happen.
From Experimenter to Educator: STEM Teaching Faculty Careers
STEM teaching faculty positions are more competitive than ever, and grad students and postdocs rarely get structured, hands-on preparation for that specific path as most academic job-search resources are built around tenure-track research careers, not the teaching-focused faculty roles that are actually growing fastest. Justin brings 14+ years as a STEM teaching professor to give your trainees the knowledge, materials, and confidence to pursue teaching faculty careers, in any STEM discipline.
Standard Workshops
An engaging and interactive session built from 14+ years of experience highlighting the landscape of STEM teaching faculty careers, how the application process works, and a teaching demo "tear-down." Participants will leave with templates and actionable strategies and tips for how to stand out on the job market when they are ready.
Design Sprint Workshops
In addition to everything covered in the standard workshop, time will be dedicated to a STEM teaching faculty application design sprint where participants will craft and build their teaching philosophy and other application materials and will receive live feedback from Justin and colleagues in the audience.
Workshop Formats
Length: From 60 minutes to a full day of programming designed to fit your audience and needsModality: In-person on your campus or on ZoomAudience size: No limit - the more the merrier!All workshops come with a 60-minute Zoom Q&A scheduled as a follow-up
Thank you for your interest in Justin's services with Recombinant Education. Looking forward to talking to you soon! Happy teaching!
STEM Teaching Materials
Browse below for samples of STEM teaching materials that Justin uses in his own courses. Feel free to use these for your own purposes and contact Justin if you have any questions!
Lesson
Plan
Template
Reading Guides for Textbooks
Textbook Adoption Rubric
A&P
Hands-On Activities
Courseware Adoption Rubric
Authentic Assessment Projects
Reading Guide Template
