I am a founding member of the Biology Education Research Group (BERG) at University of Washington and am currently focused on 2 projects: 1) Improving how we evaluate teaching and 2) developing in-class activities to teach mechanistic reasoning about structure & function.

In addition to biology education research, I also continue to pursue my interest in the role that epigenetic mechanisms such as chromatin modification, play in environmental adaptation of plants. This research is carried out by undergraduate cell and molecular biology students in a laboratory course which I developed and teach called "Experiments in Molecular Biology".  The predominantly sessile nature of plants necessitates an ability to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. The remarkable developmental plasticity that plants exhibit strongly suggest the existence of chromatin-mediated mechanisms for altering established gene expression programs. We have chosen Arabidopsis as a model system to study the role of epigenetic mechanisms in adaptation due to the public availability of transgenic lines harboring targeted disruptions of individual chromatin regulatory genes.  Students develop hypotheses and design experiments to examine the relative abilities of Arabidopsis histone acetyl transferase mutants to adapt to artificially-induced abiotic stresses including high salinity and cold temperatures.

Alison Crowe received a B.A. in Biology and French Literature from UC Santa Barbara in 1987.  She was awarded her Ph.D. from the Microbiology Department at State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1993.  She completed 2 postdoctoral fellowships, the first in the Department of Biology at University of Calgary studying seed gene regulation and the second focused on chromatin regulation of gene expression at the University of Cincinnati in the Department of Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology.  She joined the Department of Zoology at the  University of Washington in 2000 and was promoted to Principal Lecturer in the Department of Biology in 2006. Alison Crowe received a B.A. in Biology and French Literature from UC Santa Barbara in 1987.  She was awarded her Ph.D. from the Microbiology Department at State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1993.  She completed 2 postdoctoral fellowships, the first in the Department of Biology at University of Calgary studying seed gene regulation and the second focused on chromatin regulation of gene expression at the University of Cincinnati in the Department of Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology.  She joined the Department of Zoology at the  University of Washington in 2000 and was promoted to Principal Lecturer in the Department of Biology in 2006. Due to tireless advocating for teaching faculty by Dr. Mary Pat Wenderoth, all lecturers at University of Washington had the rank of professor added to their title in 2020, so she now holds the title of Teaching Professor. Her research interests include developing evidence-based inclusive active learning strategies for teaching biology and creating validated tools to guide curricular reform at the departmental level.