UMass Boston

Chemistry Education

STEM Education

B.S., Chemical Engineering

B.A., Chemistry

M.A. and M.Phil., Chemical Physics

Ph.D., Physical Chemistry

Graduate Certificate, Applied Data Science

• Sevian, H., T. D. King-Meadows, K. Caushi, T. Kakhoidze, and J. M. Karch. “Addressing Equity Asymmetries in General Chemistry Outcomes Through an Asset-Based Supplemental Course.” JACS Au 3, no. 10 (October 2023): 2715–35.
• Caspari-Gnann, I., and H. Sevian. “Teacher Dilemmas as Sources of Change and Development.” Teaching and Teacher Education 112 (April 2022): 15.
• Karch, J. M., and H. Sevian. “Development of a Framework to Capture Abstraction in Physical Chemistry Problem Solving.” Chemistry Education Research and Practice 23, no. 1 (January 2022): 55–77.
• Keen, C., and H. Sevian. “Qualifying Domains of Student Struggle in Undergraduate General Chemistry Laboratory.” Chemistry Education Research and Practice 23, no. 1 (January 2022): 12–37.
• Abell, T. N., and H. Sevian. “Investigating How Teachers’ Formative Assessment Practices Change Across a Year.” Journal of Chemical Education 98, no. 9 (September 2021): 2799–2808.
• Caushi, K., H. Sevian, and V. Talanquer. “Exploring Variation in Ways of Thinking About and Acting to Control a Chemical Reaction.” Journal of Chemical Education 98, no. 12 (December 2021): 3714–22.
• Dini, Vesal, Hannah Sevian, Klaudja Caushi, and Raúl Orduña Picón. "Characterizing the formative assessment enactment of experienced science teachers." Science Education 104, no. 2 (2020): 290-325.
• Keen, Clarissa, Steven Couture, Nayer Abd El Meseh, and Hannah Sevian. "Connecting Theory to Life: Learning Greener Electrochemistry by Taking Apart a Common Battery." Journal of Chemical Education 97, no. 4 (2020): 934-942.
• Murray, Stephanie A., Robert Huie, Rebecca Lewis, Scott Balicki, Michael Clinchot, Gregory Banks, Vicente Talanquer, and Hannah Sevian. "Teachers’ Noticing, Interpreting, and Acting on Students’ Chemical Ideas in Written Work." Journal of Chemical Education (2020).
• Karch, Jessica M., Josibel C. García Valles, and Hannah Sevian. "Looking into the Black Box: Using Gaze and Pupillometric Data to Probe How Cognitive Load Changes with Mental Tasks." Journal of Chemical Education (2019).
• Aguiar, Orlando, Hannah Sevian, and Charbel N. El-Hani. "Teaching About Energy." Science & Education 27, no. 9-10 (2018): 863-893.
• Ngai, Courtney, and Hannah Sevian. "Probing the Relevance of Chemical Identity Thinking in Biochemical Contexts." CBE—Life Sciences Education 17, no. 4 (2018): ar58, 1-12.
• Sevian, Hannah, and Steven Couture. "Epistemic games in substance characterization." Chemistry Education Research and Practice (2018).
• Clinchot, Michael, Courtney Ngai, Robert Huie, Vicente Talanquer, Jennifer Lambertz, Gregory Banks, Melissa Weinrich, Rebecca Lewis, Pamela Pelletier, and Hannah Sevian. "Better Formative Assessment." The Science Teacher 84, no. 3 (2017): 69-75.
• Ngai, Courtney, and Hannah Sevian. "Capturing Chemical Identity Thinking." Journal of Chemical Education 94, no. 2 (2017): 137-148.
• Weinrich, M. L., and H. Sevian. "Capturing students’ abstraction while solving organic reaction mechanism problems across a semester." Chemistry Education Research and Practice 18, no. 1 (2017): 169-190.
• Banks, Gregory, Michael Clinchot, Steven Cullipher, Robert Huie, Jennifer Lambertz, Rebecca Lewis, Courtney Ngai et al. "Uncovering Chemical Thinking in Students’ Decision Making: A Fuel-Choice Scenario." Journal of Chemical Education 92, no. 10 (2015): 1610-1618.
• Cullipher, Steven, and Hannah Sevian. "Atoms versus Bonds: How Students Look at Spectra." Journal of Chemical Education 92, no. 12 (2015): 1996-2005.
• Stains, Marilyne, and Hannah Sevian. "Uncovering implicit assumptions: a large-scale study on students’ mental models of diffusion." Research in Science Education 45, no. 6 (2015): 807-840.
• Sevian, Hannah, and Vicente Talanquer. "Rethinking chemistry: a learning progression on chemical thinking." Chemistry Education Research and Practice 15, no. 1 (2014): 10-23.

Dr. Sevian’s chemistry research for over two decades at UMass Boston focused on chemistry learning that is proactively inclusive, recognizes and builds on students’ cultural wealth and knowledge, and creates opportunities for learning so that students take an active role in connecting school to their lived worlds. Her ongoing research in retirement continues to focus on empowering STEM students, with focus now shifted to harnessing AI capabilities. During August 2026 through February 2027, she serves as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in Saint Lucia, offering professional development for faculty and staff to support the preparation students in tertiary education while integrating AI competencies for workforce readiness, and conducting research on how institutions can support STEM faculty and staff to develop AI expertise and pedagogical skills.

Across Dr. Sevian's career, her development of the chemical thinking framework – a disciplinary nature of science theory that characterizes chemistry as the pursuit of six questions that are unique to chemistry – with collaborator Vicente Talanquer was tightly connected to her teaching of chemistry, which centered on strengthening students’ capabilities in chemical thinking, building on the relevance of chemistry in their careers and lives. In research, she is known for studying how students develop chemical thinking across the decade from secondary to tertiary chemistry, how a focus on green chemistry influences students’ learning of chemistry, and how scientists and teachers develop responsive classroom assessment practices that promote students’ meaning making in chemistry. Her research has been published in chemistry, chemistry education, and science education journals and books. Innovation products were also developed through this research:

• The Assessing for Change in Chemical Thinking (ACCT) program is an 8-session course of study meant to be led by experienced chemistry teachers for their peers. It refocuses and enhances middle and high school teachers’ abilities to notice, interpret, and respond to students’ chemical ideas through strengthened formative assessment practices. The ACCT program resulted from a long-term NSF-funded collaboration with secondary chemistry teachers in Boston Public Schools and the BPS Science Department. The professional learning program was piloted nationally and all resources are freely available on the American Chemical Society’s ChemEd Xchange website at www.chemedex.org/ACCT.
• An asset-based and culturally responsive supplemental chemistry course was developed by Dr. Sevian for students with higher likelihood of DFW outcomes in general chemistry. The development and study of impacts of this course were supported by NSF. Participation in the asset-based course has been demonstrated to close equity gaps in learning outcomes in General Chemistry 1 when coupled with use of the chemical thinking curriculum in the lecture course. Results of the study and the full curriculum and instructional resources for the asset-based supplemental chemistry course are available via an open-access article published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society Au in 2023.