Profs at the Pub: Joy and Rigor with Jackie Shay

Profs at the Pub with Professor Jackie Shay

Tuesday, November 17th, 2026
6:30 PM at Validation Ale (Annex, 2840 De La Vina Street)

Joy and Rigor: What Joy-Centered Teaching Does for Students and for US

Have you ever felt like an imposter in science? Many people do, from first-year students to seasoned professors, and it hits first-generation and underrepresented students hardest. UCSB ecologist and educator Jackie Shay knows the feeling firsthand. She’ll share how she went from being convinced she’d “faked her way” into science to a professor who studies how people learn, and why her answer to imposter syndrome is joyful curiosity.

Drawing on the book Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education, she makes the case that joy isn’t the opposite of rigor. It’s what keeps learners going through the hard parts by building a sense of mattering, resilience, and agency. Then the talk turns to “us”: in a study across four universities, efforts to improve teaching ended up transforming the faculty most, building confidence, leadership and community. Expect a quick live poll, a chance to swap stories with your neighbor about when science last felt joyful, and one small idea to take home. No science background required, just curiosity.

About the Professor

Professor Shay an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She studies impactful and meaningful experiences in teaching and learning, from joy-centered pedagogy to graduate student teaching professional development and course-based research experiences. She believes every student can find joy in the learning process! Her goal is to use integrative qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how meaningful experiences and collaboration promote an ecosystem of joyful learning in biology. She is fascinated with the intimate history and future significance of symbiotic relationships between plant hosts and their microbial communities. She is trained as a fungal evolutionary biologist and microbial ecologist––appreciating the resilience of plant microbial communities as they shift in response to climate change.

She received her master’s in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from the Desjardin lab at San Francisco State University, studying the evolution of wood-decaying mushrooms (Marasmius) from Madagascar, and her Ph.D. in the Quantitative and Systems Biology Program at the University of California, Merced, advised by Jay Sexton and Carolin Frank. This interdisciplinary team has set out to uncover the mystery behind the Monkeyflower microbiome and discover whether these microbes influence their plant hosts across its range. Previously, she served as the Associate Director for the Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning in the Teaching Commons at UC Merced, where she utilized her experience in pedagogy and biology education to help instructors create inclusive STEM courses to uplift all student experiences. Now, she combine my love for teaching and biology to promote student success at UCSB!

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