Rachel Kennison

Rachel Kennison is the Executive Director of UCLA’s Center for Education, Innovation and Learning in the Sciences (CEILS) and Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Along with overseeing many initiatives in CEILS to transform teaching to reduce equity gaps and increase retention and persistence in STEM, she developed the CEILS Becoming an Antiracist Educator Conversation Series, offered to all Life and Physical Science faculty.  She is also the Institutional Administrative Co-Leader for UCLA’s Center for the Integration of Research,Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) and currently serves on CIRTL’s Leadership Team. She is PI and Co-Director of CIRTL’s multi-institution NSF-IUSE funded grant that supports CIRTL Graduate Students and Postdocs to become Change Leaders in Higher Education.

Rachel has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate level courses, and is currently teaching Career Exploration in the Life Sciences for Undergraduates; with over 300 students every quarter, this course supports their career development to support retention in STEM fields (Scaling up a life sciences college career exploration course to foster STEM confidence and career self-efficacy, DOI: 10.1080/02635143.2022.2083599).

 
Rachel earned her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, M.S. in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in Biology from UCLA in 2008 and received the UCLA Life Sciences Award for Education Innovation. She spends at least one day a week at the beach with her dog, Luna, and is always excited to return to NYC to visit her son, who is living his best life in Brooklyn.