About

Janet L. Branchaw is an Associate Professor of Kinesiology in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She serves as the Faculty Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Science Education and Community Engagement (WISCIENCE). Her research and programming focus on developing, implementing, and evaluating innovative approaches to science education at both undergraduate and graduate levels, with particular emphasis on research training and mentoring, assessment of student learning, and broadening participation in science. She teaches courses in physiology and college science teaching methods. Her educational background includes a PhD and MS in Physiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BS in Zoology from Iowa State University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Medical education
• Medicine
• Social Science
• Pedagogy
• Computer Science
• Public relations
• Social psychology
• Mathematics education
• Engineering ethics
• Engineering
• Epistemology
• Data science
• Management science

Selected publications

• Response to “The role of mediators in undergraduate field experiences: suggesting additional perspectives to the UFERN model”

  BioScience · 2025-04-23

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Comprehensive Researcher Development Framework for Undergraduate, Graduate, and Postdoctoral Trainees

  Physiology · 2025-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The objective of this study is to create a comprehensive researcher development framework for research trainees from undergraduate through postdoctoral career stages to articulate transparent areas of trainee development and learning objectives that can support inclusive research training programs. A common framework will reveal the hidden curriculum of research training to nascent trainees, provide them and their mentors with learning objectives to use in planning and tracking progress in research learning experiences, and guide research training program directors to design and evaluate their programs. We hypothesized that a common set of research trainee learning objectives could be identified from published frameworks. A systematic literature review (Cooper, 1998) yielded 123 framework articles published since 2000. Review using inclusion criteria that required identification of specific attributes or skills for trainees in the undergraduate, graduate and/or postdoctoral career stages, as well as at least one source of validity evidence (AERA et.al., 2014) resulted in 56 articles that identified 1,435 researcher training elements or competencies. Three independent researchers reviewed and grouped the elements and competencies, then compared and discussed them to create 43 common themes to which 1,343 relevant elements and competencies were coded. The elements and competencies coded under each theme were analyzed by one researcher who drafted 79 distinct learning objectives. Research training program directors, research mentors, and research mentees across the nation were invited to provide feedback on the 79 draft learning objectives in an online survey that received 169 responses. Over 90% of the learning objectives were rated as extremely or moderately important, and respondents indicated that approximately 55% of the learning objectives were addressed during graduate training, 25% during undergraduate training, and 12% during postdoctoral training. Less than 10% of the learning objectives were reported as not addressed, though several of these were still identified as important, suggesting a gap in research training curricula. Based on survey feedback, revisions were made, and a revised set of 78 learning objectives were finalized. Focus groups are being conducted with research training program directors, research mentors, and postdoctoral scholars to categorize the learning objectives. Common categories will be identified as areas of trainee development with learning objectives as the final framework. Recommendations and resources for using the framework in designing and evaluating research training programs as well as tools for research mentors and mentees to track mentee development in the areas will be published based on the final framework. This work is funded by the Wisconsin Institute for Science Education & Community Engagement (WISCIENCE) and revenue generated from CIMER research mentor and mentee trainings. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.

  PublisherDOI

• Transfer STEM Immersion: Creating a Summer Orientation Program for Incoming 2- to 4-Year STEM Transfer Students

  Community College Journal of Research and Practice · 2025-02-04

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Model First-Year Seminar Introducing STEM Students to Community Engagement and Public Service

  College Teaching · 2025-11-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Transfer STEM Immersion: Creating a Summer Orientation Program for Incoming 2- to 4-Year STEM Transfer Students

  2025-08-29

  book-chapterSenior author

  STEM transfer students undergo an institution-specific adjustment and navigate field-specific ambiguities that accompany STEM higher education. Summer orientation programs aimed at preparing and socializing undergraduate STEM students often focus on providing high school students with foundational academic knowledge rather than providing transfer students, who have already acquired academic capital, with support in acclimating to a new environment. In this brief, we describe the creation of Transfer STEM Immersion (TSI), a summer orientation program for 2- to 4-year STEM transfer students and present evaluation research data documenting its impact. Using Transfer Student Capital as a guiding framework, we describe the strategic development and implementation of TSI, including program design, participant recruitment, and content considerations. We conclude with recommendations for campus leaders who seek to create similar programming that centers incoming transfer students, considers the field-specific complexities of STEM, and facilitates a more transparent and equitable transfer process.

  PublisherDOI

• Building Strong Mentorship Ecosystems to Support Positive URE Student Outcomes

  Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Mentorship ecosystems significantly impact undergraduate research experience (URE) student outcomes. Institutional, departmental, and research team cultures contribute to the mentorship ecosystem, but equally important are mentor-student relationships and the skills that mentors and mentees bring to their relationships. Research investigating the association between relational factors and URE student outcomes is needed to design optimal URE learning experiences. The mission of the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) is to advance research in this area and provide support to research students, mentors and institutions. This commentary highlights what research has revealed about research students, their mentors and the student-mentor relationship, and the evidence-based resources and training offered through CIMER to support scholars investigating UREs.

  PublisherDOI

• The comprehensive researcher development framework (CRDF): Core learning outcomes for research training

  PLoS ONE · 2025-09-15 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Becoming a researcher involves the iterative development of deep disciplinary knowledge, specific technical skills, and psychosocial attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. Consequently, training researchers is resource- and time-intensive. In addition, expectations can be opaque because the traditional apprenticeship model used in research training is idiosyncratic, defined by norms and traditions that vary across disciplines. To align and make research training expectations more transparent, we developed the Comprehensive Researcher Development Framework (CRDF) by extracting and analyzing learning outcomes from 56 previously published evidence-based frameworks from across disciplines. The individual frameworks each addressed a limited range of training stages (e.g., undergraduate only), focused on a subset of learning outcomes (e.g., technical skills), and/or included a single or narrow subset of disciplines (e.g., biomedical sciences). The CRDF derived from these frameworks includes 79 core learning outcomes nested under 8 areas of researcher development that are supported by evidence of content validity collected from experts in the research community. The CRDF builds consensus across disciplines and addresses undergraduate through postdoctoral career stages to define a coherent continuum of research learning outcomes that can be used to monitor and study researcher development. The CRDF does not replace existing discipline-based or training stage specific frameworks but rather can link and coordinate their use. The CRDF can be used by research training program directors to design new or refine existing research training programs, track individual research mentee development over time, and demystify the research training process for mentors and mentees. The CRDF can also be used by scholars studying researcher development to link data on core learning outcomes across research training programs, stages, and disciplines.

  PublisherDOI

• Gender-Stereotype Messaging Impacts Perceptions of the Field of Speech-Language Pathology

  Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups · 2025-01-28

  article

  Purpose: The field of speech-language pathology has been and remains predominantly female, despite efforts aimed at increasing gender diversity. This study sought to determine if gender-based stereotype messaging influences students' perceptions of the field of speech-language pathology and if exposure to messaging with a short video would change student impressions of the speech-language pathology profession. Method: A total of 472 undergraduate students were recruited to participate in this study and were randomly assigned to three exposure conditions: (a) male-stereotype video, (b) female-stereotype video, and (c) no video. Student perceptions were evaluated with a survey, and participants' demographic data were collected including age, race/ethnicity, academic standing, and self-reported gender identity. Results: Overall, female participants expressed higher interest in the speech-language pathology profession, felt they would be more successful in an speech-language pathology career, perceived the field of speech-language pathology to have a higher social status, and were more likely to express interest in an speech-language pathology career than male participants. However, participants who viewed the male-stereotype video, regardless of gender, perceived the field of speech-language pathology as more scientific and reported that speech-language pathologists had greater autonomy in the field and had achieved a higher social status. Additionally, participants perceived the field of speech-language pathology as more masculine if they viewed the male-stereotype video and as more feminine if they viewed the female-stereotype video. Conclusion: The results of this work demonstrate that gender-stereotype career messaging is highly influential in student perceptions of the field and should be considered when motivating students to pursue speech-language pathology as a profession.

  PublisherDOI

• Virtually the Same? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Remote Undergraduate Research Experiences

  CBE—Life Sciences Education · 2023 · 14 citations

  • Medical education
  • Psychology
  • Pedagogy

  In-person undergraduate research experiences (UREs) promote students' integration into careers in life science research. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted institutions hosting summer URE programs to offer them remotely, raising questions about whether undergraduates who participate in remote research can experience scientific integration and whether they might perceive doing research less favorably (i.e., not beneficial or too costly). To address these questions, we examined indicators of scientific integration and perceptions of the benefits and costs of doing research among students who participated in remote life science URE programs in Summer 2020. We found that students experienced gains in scientific self-efficacy pre- to post-URE, similar to results reported for in-person UREs. We also found that students experienced gains in scientific identity, graduate and career intentions, and perceptions of the benefits of doing research only if they started their remote UREs at lower levels on these variables. Collectively, students did not change in their perceptions of the costs of doing research despite the challenges of working remotely. Yet students who started with low cost perceptions increased in these perceptions. These findings indicate that remote UREs can support students' self-efficacy development, but may otherwise be limited in their potential to promote scientific integration.

  PublisherDOI

• Case study: Assessing the impact of concept mapping during an exam review on exam performance in a large-enrollment human physiology course

  Physiology · 2023-05-01

  articleSenior author

  A typical college-level human physiology course surveys a breadth of physiological topics. Students are expected to demonstrate an understanding of organ system functions from the molecular to the organismal scale as well as an understanding of how interactions between organ systems produce integrated functions. Concept maps are learning tools that help students make connections between seemingly disparate concepts, like physiological processes occurring at different scales and interactions between different organ systems. The purpose of this study was to compare exam scores of students who attended a review session with concept mapping to those who attended a review session without concept mapping, as well as to assess the perceived exam preparedness of students who attended an exam review and those who did not attend an exam review. We hypothesized that the addition of concept mapping during an exam review session would improve average student exam scores and that students who attended a review session would report that they were better prepared for the exam.The concept map intervention was implemented as part of each exam review session for two in-person offerings of a large enrollment intermediate level human physiology course (n=747 students) in 2021–22 at a large public research university. Control exam performance data was collected in the same course without the concept map intervention as part of the exam review sessions for two in-person offerings (n=807 students) during 2017-18. The intervention groups’ exam review sessions consisted of 30 minutes of concept mapping followed by 20 minutes of a student question and answer session. The control groups’ exam review sessions consisted of 50 minutes of a student question and answer session. After each exam, students were asked to report the grade they expected to earn on the exam (A, B, C, D or F) as a measure of their level of exam preparedness. A student’s t-test was used to determine significant differences between exam scores of students in the intervention and control group. Data are presented as mean exam score (%)±SD.Overall exam scores in the control group (80.4±11.7) were significantly higher than the experimental group (78.75±11.8, p=0.007). Of the students who participated in the survey, 2,228 participated in the exam review and 543 did not. Perceived exam preparedness are as follows for groups that attended the exam review (expecting A:25%, B:55%, C:18%, D:2%, F:0%) and those who did not attend (expecting A:20%, B:49%, C:23%, D:4%, F:2%).The overall exam scores from the control group were higher than the experimental group. This suggests that adding concept maps to the review session did not improve exam scores. There may be confounding factors affecting exam scores (ex: transitioning to an in-person setting after the global pandemic). More research needs to be done to understand the impact of including concept map exercises in exam review sessions on student exam performance. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• URM: University of Wisconsin - Madison Portal Program to Interdisciplinary Research in the Biological Sciences

  NSF · $908k · 2007–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Christine Pfund

  15 shared

• Angela Byars‐Winston

  11 shared

• Elizabeth Padilla-Crespo

  University of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla

  8 shared

• Kevin R. Burgio

  Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

  8 shared

• Alan R. Berkowitz

  Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

  7 shared

• Rosemary J. Smith

  Idaho State University

  7 shared

• Caroline J. Wienhold

  University of Tennessee at Knoxville

  6 shared

• Jenna Rogers

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Kinesiology

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  1990

• M.S., Kinesiology

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  1986

• B.S., Kinesiology

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  1983

Awards & honors

• Committee on Strengthening Research Experiences for Undergra…
• Alliant Energy Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award, Uni…