This month, our "Human of DBER" is Dr. Dina Newman, a Professor in the College of Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the recipient of the 2026 Mary Pat Wenderoth Lectureship Award.

I never set out to become a biology education researcher—in fact, I didn't know the field existed until I was nearly 40. My training was in molecular genetics, first studying bacterial colony development and later investigating complex diseases in humans. I was really looking for a teaching position in Upstate New York when I found an opportunity to study the genetics of age-related hearing loss at Rochester Institute of Technology as the Department of Biological Sciences' first research faculty hire. There, I led a grant-funded human genetics research program focused on mentoring undergraduate researchers. A few years later, I moved into a tenure-track position that I thought would allow me to spend more time teaching. Ironically, just as I made that transition, RIT began shifting from a primarily teaching-focused institution to a stronger emphasis on research and scholarship. The type of undergraduate-centered genetics research I had been doing was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain and publish, and I worried about how I would succeed in this new environment.

A pivotal conversation with my dean led me to a physics colleague, Scott Franklin, who introduced me to the field of discipline-based education research, taught me its foundations, and welcomed me into the DBER community. Together with Scott, a chemistry colleague named Tom Kim, whose deep knowledge of the literature and thoughtful guidance helped me develop as a researcher, and my biology colleague Kate Wright, who shared both my circumstances and my fascination with teaching and learning, we formed a small DBER journal club. Kate and I soon launched our first studies on why students struggle to understand meiosis, and that work grew into a long-standing and fruitful research partnership that continues to this day. Through DBER, I found a way to bring together my love of biology, teaching, and research while becoming part of a vibrant interdisciplinary community. I began attending SABER in 2011, and it quickly became my professional home. The friendships, collaborations, and mentorship I found there have shaped my career ever since and inspired me to help build community for others through SABER East, a regional meeting that I launched in 2024 and have hosted at RIT for the past three years. That same spirit of community-building helped our small journal club grow into CASTLE, a research center that now includes numerous faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates working across STEM education research. Looking back, the path was anything but linear, but the projects, collaborations, and institutional changes that once seemed daunting led me to work that now feels deeply meaningful.