Join us for the first SL4E (Science Literacy for Excellence) Research Collaboratory Community Conversation, a virtual space where language, science literacy, and place come together.

At SL4E, our work centers on understanding how the languages we speak shape the ways we learn and share scientific knowledge, rooted in the communities and land around us.

About the Conversation

What are “forever chemicals,” and why are people becoming more concerned about them across the United States? How can environmental scientists, economists, and community members work together to address this problem? Why does understanding the relationship between people and the natural world matter for building resilience and making informed decisions?

This community conversation will explore these questions through the work of an MSU-led team of interdisciplinary researchers who are developing tools to help us better understand PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, in the Gulf region. The conversation will especially highlight how working closely with communities can strengthen environmental research and public awareness.

About Our Community Speakers

Brenna Jungers, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and an SSRC Research Fellow. She is an environmental economist who studies how people and the environment affect and depend on one another, as well as how those systems can remain resilient over time.

Katerina Sergi, Ph.D. is an Assistant Research Professor at Mississippi State University’s Social Science Research Center. She evaluates federal and state programs using a mix of research methods, with a focus on rural education, school-based mental health, public health, and community-based research along the Gulf Coast.

About the Conversation

What does it look like when science, storytelling, and multiple languages come together to help communities care for the places they call home? How can students, families, and researchers work side by side, as partners, to understand local issues such as native plants and how to prepare for a tornado? What happens when multilingual communities get to tell their own environmental stories in their own words?

This community conversation will explore these questions through SEMBRAR, a Gulf Coast research project funded through the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellowship. The project connects schools, families, researchers, and community members across Mississippi and Florida.

About Our Community Speakers

Lourdes Cardozo-Gaibisso, Ph.D.
SL4E Lab Director
Associate Professor of TESOL and Linguistics

Dr. Lourdes Cardozo-Gaibisso is an Associate Professor of TESOL and Linguistics in the Department of English at Mississippi State University and a Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center, where she leads the Science Literacy for Excellence Research Collaboratory.

A systemic functional linguist, her scholarship focuses on advancing science literacy for multilingual learners through research on teaching and learning, science teacher education and professional development, and the design and interpretation of assessments for multilingual students in science contexts.

Dr. Cardozo-Gaibisso is a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellow for 2024–2026. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and has prior academic and research experience in Uruguay, bringing an international and multilingual perspective to her work in language, literacy, and science education.

Leynar Leyton Naranjo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor and Extension State Specialist
SEMBRAR Co-Principal Investigator

Dr. Leyton specializes in the breeding and genetics of landscape plants. With a focus on underutilized native plants, his program seeks to develop resilient ornamental plants with drought and heat tolerance, improved landscape and production performance, enhanced ecosystem services, and sterility.

He also directs the Gary W. Knox Gardens of the Big Bend, where he leads initiatives focused on increasing urban horticulture awareness, plant conservation, and the evaluation of new plant varieties.

Matthew Lentz
SL4E Graduate Research Assistant

Matthew Lentz is a graduate research assistant whose interests span weather risk communication, climate modeling, and how international communities perceive and respond to severe weather warnings. His previous research includes an undergraduate honors thesis evaluating severe weather risk perceptions among international students.

In his graduate work, Matthew is bridging this behavioral research with his interest in the technical and quantitative side of winter storm modeling, including the use of artificial intelligence to improve forecasting and public safety. He also serves as the sole creator and developer of this website.

About the Conversation

What happens when science class moves out of the classroom and into afterschool clubs, family nights, and community spaces? How can teachers work with students to build science knowledge in a way that also builds their language, culture, and community ties? What does it take to make science not just something students learn, but something they co-create with the people around them?

This community conversation will explore these questions through LaCuKnoS, or Language, Culture and Knowledge-Building through Science, a five-year federally funded project from the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Working with K–12 teachers, the project reimagined science teaching through afterschool science clubs and family nights built around co-learning.

About Our Community Speaker

Cory Buxton, Ph.D. is a Professor of Science Education at Oregon State University. His research fosters more equitable science learning opportunities for all students, especially multilingual learners, by bringing together teacher professional learning and family engagement experiences in both school-based and out-of-school settings.

About the Conversation

What do children understand about a changing climate, and how does that understanding take root when it is tied to the place they call home?

In this community conversation, Dr. Fackler will share how fourth-grade students in New Orleans made sense of climate change-related water issues through a place-based unit centered on Lake Pontchartrain. Rather than treating climate science as something abstract or far away, students explored it as something tied directly to their own neighborhoods and daily lives.

Their responses revealed how science learning connected with their lived experiences, emotions, sense of care, and feelings of responsibility toward their community. Their work offers a window into how young people process and make meaning of a changing world close to home.

About Our Community Speaker

Ayça Fackler, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Science Education at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on supporting multilingual learners in science classrooms, with particular attention to how language is used within science practices.

She specializes in elementary science education and preservice science teacher education and employs qualitative research methods to examine teaching and learning. Across her work, Dr. Fackler advances linguistic justice in science education and investigates how multimodality in scientific modeling supports the construction of scientific knowledge.