Initial Publication Date: May 8, 2023

Cailin Huyck Orr

Associate Director, SERC at Carleton College

About Me

In my role at SERC, I work with people across the US who are striving to improve teaching, learning and climate in higher education STEM fields through many approaches at scales from individual instructor to inter-institution collaboration. My academic training is in freshwater science and I earned a Ph.D. in Limnology from the University of Wisconsin and was an NSF IGERT fellow in the UW- Madison Social and Aquatic systems program. I taught in an Earth and Environmental Science department before joining SERC in 2014. My husband and I have three kids and live in Northfield, Minnesota near the Carleton College campus. We practice Ueshiro Shorin-Ryu karate together.

Focus of current FEW-Nexus-based education work

Before changing careers and joining SERC, I lead an interdisciplinary Water Sustainability Climate project funded through a joint USDA-NSF project looking at water quality/quantity/timing futures in the Columbia River basin. I worked to bring the physical science-social science-engineering combined approach to water issues into my teaching. Several projects I've had the chance to work with at SERC take that same approach of combining societal issues and natural science to help bring relevancy to students' classroom experience. This includes explicitly creating materials and models for educators in interdisciplinary teaching.

FEW-Nexus-based education experience, expertise and interests

The SERC collaboration with NC-FEW can help make use of models for sharing and bringing your ideas to use based on other work we've done with partners including the InTeGrate STEM Talent Expansion program.