Dr. Donna Nelson researches the influences of attitude and personality upon learning and performance in the classroom. Students’ beliefs about their ability to improve their intelligence (known as mindset) have more impact on their academic outcomes in challenging learning environments, such as organic chemistry courses. Because little work has been done on the influence of mindset or personality upon performance in these courses, Dr. Nelson’s research determines the impacts of these characteristics by using the corresponding surveys. By comparing pre-course versus post-course survey scores, the impact of course content can be discerned and compared across courses.

 

Dr. Nelson engages the chemistry community and serves professional societies and organizations, collectively described as work ensuring America's Scientific Readiness. In these activities, she focuses on science education and impacting science by considering its communities. This includes classroom innovations and correcting organic chemistry textbook inaccuracies, increasing ethnic and gender diversity (the Nelson Diversity Surveys) among highly ranked science departments of research universities, and improving the image and presentation of science and scientists to the public. Her impact on the image of science and scientists includes being science advisor to the award-winning AMC television show Breaking Bad and 2016 President of the American Chemical Society, the largest scientific society in the world.

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