Mindy Chappell, PhD, is a native of East Saint Louis, Illinois, who currently resides in Oregon and serves as an Assistant Professor at Portland State University. She obtained a bachelor's degree in chemistry, an MEd Science Education degree, and a Doctorate in Science Education from the University of Illinois Chicago. As a University of Illinois at Chicago Science Education doctorate program graduate, a Robert Noyce Master Teaching Fellow with Project SEEEC (Science Education for Excellence and Equity in Chicago), and Asst. Professor of Secondary Science Education Mindy Chappell is committed to principles of academic access and excellence, civic responsibility, and teaching for equity and social justice. Her former practice as a high-school science teacher and dance coach informs her research. She designs and studies curricular and pedagogical practices that support young people's science learning and facilitate their development as change agents who use the knowledge and skills achieved in their science classes to advocate for their community and transform their world.
Emerging from her intersecting science and dance identities, her primary body of research focuses on studying how arts-based research practices and, specifically, ethnodance inform the study of Black students' science identity. Mindy studies ways in which dance provides an avenue to explore identity construction in unbounded, soulful, and creative ways consistent with the spirit of Black dances and, thus, more fruitfully support and explore Black youth's science identity construction.
Through her work with the Youth Participatory Science Collective, a collaboration between Chicago Public School teachers and their students, alongside community organizations, university scientists, and science educators at UIC, Loyola, and Northwestern, Mindy explores heavy metal contamination in chemistry classrooms. She supports students' chemistry learning using social justice, historical, scientific, political, economic, and environmental lenses.
Mindy attributes her professional and personal achievements to having supportive, caring, and inspiring mentors and lanterns.