From the National Academies: Medical School Admissions Requirements and Undergraduate Science Education

Scientists gathered in Mill Valley [CA] Thursday as part of a fact-finding mission to determine what effect the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. has on the ecology of Drakes Estero. The company’s lease allowing it to grow and harvest oysters in Drakes Estero ends in 2012, and the Point Reyes National Seashore wants to turn it into a wilderness area thereafter. But owner Kevin Lunny said the operation causes no harm and may help the ecosystem. He wants to stay. The National Research Council—an arm of the National Academy of Sciences—was tapped by the National Park Service to examine the issue at the request of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D.-Calif. That process began Thursday as the nine members of the committee—including experts in agriculture, disease, marine sciences and oceanography—heard from a variety of people connected to the issue in what had the feel of a courtroom at the Aqua Hotel . . .

The Vision and Change effort to explore and implement needed changes in undergraduate biology education has been ongoing since 2006. It is now time to take stock of changes that have occurred at the faculty and single-course levels, and to consider how to accomplish the larger-scale changes needed at departmental and institutional levels. This article is a continuation of our efforts to keep people informed about the next steps for Vision and Change, in particular ongoing activities that need community (your) input, and what resources are available to support the Vision stated in 2009: “the biology we teach should reflect the biology we do” (American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 2011 ).

Medical schools using formal undergrad-uate selectivity measures do so to compensate for the psychometricinadequacies of college grade-point averages, believing that moremeaning can be derived from the GPA if it is attached to a measureof institutional performance (academic rigor) or selectivity (strin-gent admission standards).Researchers have reported mixed results on whether formal mea-sures of undergraduate institution selectivity are useful contributorsto predicting medical student performance.

The executive summary provides an overview of some of V&C's key recommendations regarding next steps in the effort to mobilize the biology community. It is, in essence, a call for national service. A publication discussing these recommendations and action items in more depth will be available later this year. Meanwhile, we highly recommend reading the Executive Summary of V&C, the NAS report (NAS, 2010), and a seminal article by Labov et al. (2010) summarizing the synergy created by these several reports on the changing nature of studies in biology and concomitant need to change biology education. Then, take action! Our hope is to see the formation of a community of biologists, similar to that forming in geology (Manduca et al., 2010): one that will advance biology undergraduate education so it truly reflects the discipline it serves.

A healthy lifestyle is fundamental for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Investment in primary prevention, including modification of health risk behaviors, could result in a 4-fold improvement in health outcomes compared with secondary prevention based on pharmacological treatment. The American Heart Association (AHA) emphasized the importance of lifestyle in its 2020 goals for cardiovascular health promotion and disease reduction. In addition to defining “cardiovascular health” based on criteria for blood pressure and biochemical markers (lipids and glycemia), the AHA Strategic Planning Committee further identified lifestyle characteristics of central importance: nutrition, physical activity, smoking, and maintenance of a healthy body weight.1 The World Health Organization estimated that ≈80% of NCDs could be prevented if 4 key lifestyle practices were followed: a healthy diet, being physically active, avoidance of tobacco, and alcohol intake in moderation.2 To support healthy lifestyle initiatives, major changes are necessary at the societal level to improve population health. Numerous strategies might help to create a culture that promotes and facilitates healthy behaviors, including creating laws and regulations, mounting large-scale public awareness and education campaigns, implementing local community programs, and providing individual counseling.3 Physicians are uniquely positioned to encourage individuals to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors: Approximately 80% of Americans visit their primary care physician at least once a year. Physicians directly communicate with their patients during clinical encounters across numerous settings, and research indicates that patients highly value recommendations provided by their physicians.4,5 However, data further indicate that lifestyle counseling does not routinely occur in physicians’ offices, thereby representing a lost opportunity. Physicians report that they perform lifestyle counseling during ≈34% of clinic visits.4 Patients, in turn, report an even lower frequency of physician lifestyle counseling. For example, obese patients reported receiving physical activity and …

The effect of a variety of preadmission variables, including the number of elective preadmission upper-level science courses, on academic achievement is not well established. To investigate the relationship between number of preadmission variables and overall student academic achievement in osteopathic medical school. Academic records of osteopathic medical students in the 2008 and 2009 graduating classes of Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific in Pomona, California, were analyzed. Multivariate linear regression analyses were performed to identify predictors of academic achievement based on Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) subscores, undergraduate grade point average (GPA), GPA in medical school basic science (preclinical GPA) and clinical clerkship (clinical GPA), and scores on the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examination-USA (COMLEX-USA) Level 1 and Level 2-Cognitive Evaluation (CE). Records of 358 osteopathic medical students were evaluated. Analysis of beta coefficients suggested that undergraduate science GPA was the most important predictor of overall student academic achievement (P<.01). Biological sciences MCAT subscore was a more modest but still statistically significant predictor of preclinical GPA and COMLEX-USA Level 1 score (P<.01). Physical sciences MCAT subscore was also a statistically significant predictor of preclinical GPA, and verbal reasoning MCAT subscore was a statistically significant predictor of COMLEX-USA Level 2-CE score (both P<.01). Women had statistically significantly higher preclinical GPA and COMLEX-USA Level 2-CE scores than men (P<.05). Differences in some outcome variables were also associated with racial-ethnic background and age. Number of preadmission elective upper-level science courses taken by students before matriculation was not significantly correlated with any academic achievement variable. Although undergraduate science GPA and MCAT biological sciences subscore were significant predictors of overall academic achievement for osteopathic medical students, the number of elective upper-level science courses taken preadmission had no predictive value.

The organization Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN; www.funfaculty.org) was established in 1991 by a group of neuroscientists dedicated to innovation and excellence in undergraduate neuroscience education and research (Ramirez and Normansell, 2003 ). The founders experienced a need for a community of neuroscience educators because no formal division existed within the Society for Neuroscience (SfN; www.sfn.org) to support undergraduates or the faculty who focus on undergraduate neuroscience education. An educator's ability to incorporate current research and techniques in crowded undergraduate curricula becomes even more critical as our understanding of how nervous systems develop, function, adapt, and malfunction continues to expand. Teaching faculty must meet the significant challenges of communicating a broad and fast-paced discipline to a growing undergraduate audience. Moreover, as research experiences for undergraduates are increasingly encouraged and expected, providing undergraduates with meaningful research experiences is an additional, ongoing challenge for educators in the face of smaller budgets for research and education. To help undergraduate neuroscience faculty meet these challenges, FUN has emerged as a professional organization dedicated to the support and development of undergraduate neuroscience educators. The need for an organization that specifically supports excellence in undergraduate neuroscience has grown as an increasing number of interdisciplinary undergraduate neuroscience programs are formalized at colleges and universities. As evidence of the growing interest, FUN's membership has been increasing steadily and currently includes more than 500 individuals at more than 300 colleges and universities. FUN's members represent a broad range of scientific disciplines, including biology, psychology, chemistry, computer science, and philosophy; they work and teach at a variety of institutions, ranging from private, small liberal arts colleges to regional, state, and research universities.

Biomedical research is rapidly transforming our understanding of health and disease, with major implications for medical practice. But the science education of physicians has not kept pace with these advances. Today, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute release a report that addresses this issue. * The analysis, by a committee of U.S. undergraduate and medical school faculty that we co-chaired, comes 6 years after the U.S. National Academies report BIO 2010 , which noted that undergraduate premedical course requirements and the content of the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) constrain innovation in undergraduate science education.

The National Study of Education in Undergraduate Science (NSEUS) was a multiyear (2006–2012) National Science Foundation supported research project. We focused on critical needs in teaching undergraduate science to diverse majors. A specific long-term emphasis in this study was on the development of pedagogical content knowledge of preservice elementary teachers of science. The research question guiding the investigation was, “How do undergraduate entry-level science courses, differing in level of reform, affect student outcomes?” Entry-level undergraduate science courses were analyzed in a faculty professional development impact design model involving a national sample of reformed and comparison undergraduate science courses from a population of 103 universities. The NSEUS study investigated several sub-questions related to outcomes of faculty professional development. The results discussed centered around four sub-questions. The NSEUS Research Model provides evidence for an undergraduate reform process extending from initial faculty professional development to increased student learning outcomes. What we learned was that the reform process is not a short-term endeavor. It is a process that is long-term and for most, rarely ends. The broader impacts of this study advance the professional development, course planning, and teaching of undergraduate science faculty and the development of more effective entry-level courses. Other aspects of the complete study are presented in Chapters 1 and 2.

COMMENTARY Gallery of ocean life Attributing weather for policy? LETTERS I BOOKS I POLICY FORUM I EDUCATION FORUM I PERSPECTIVES LETTERS edited by Jennifer Sills THE REPORT “COPING WITH CHAOS: HOW DISORDERED CONTEXTS PROMOTE STEREOTYPING AND discrimination” by D. A. Stapel and S. Lindenberg (1) reported the effects of the physi- cal environment on human stereotyping and discriminatory behavior. On 31 October 2011, Tilburg University held a press conference to announce interim fi ndings of its investiga- tion into possible data fraud in the body of work published by Stapel. The offi cial report in Dutch (translated into English using Google software) indicates that the extent of the fraud by Stapel is substantial. Pending further details of the Tilburg Committee’s fi ndings, Science is publishing this Editorial Expression of Concern to alert our readers that serious concerns have been raised about the validity of the fi ndings in this Report. BRUCE ALBERTS Editor-in-Chief Reference 1. D. A. Stapel, S. Lindenberg, Science 332, 251 (2011). Published online 1 November 2011; 10.1126/science.1216027 IN 2009, THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN Medical Colleges (AAMC), in collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), reviewed the educational prereq- uisites for admission to medical school in the United States. Because a large fraction of undergraduate students enroll in science courses to meet the requirements for admis- sion to medical school, courses satisfy- ing these requirements dominate the under- graduate science curriculum. The prescribed course structure has impeded educational innovation, particularly the development of new, multidisciplinary courses. To address this situation, the AAMC- HHMI report (1) recommends that scien- tifi c competencies replace specifi c courses as requirements for medical school admis- sions. They recommend that students “dem- onstrate both knowledge of and ability to use basic principles of mathematics and statis- tics, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, and biology needed for the application of the sci- ences to human health and disease; demon- strate observational and analytical skills and the ability to apply those skills and principles to biological situations.” The report articu- lates eight competencies in the areas of scien- tifi c knowledge and reasoning and provides learning objectives with examples in each of these areas, independent of the identity of the specifi c courses taken to achieve these com- petencies. In March 2011, a committee of the AAMC released preliminary recommenda- tions (2) for changes to the Medical College Admission Test based on this report, with planned implementation in 2015. We are HHMI professors who share the goal of promoting excellence in science edu- cation through the development of novel 11 NOVEMBER 2011 WINSTON A. ANDERSON, 1 RICHARD M. AMASINO, 2 MANUEL ARES JR., 3 UTPAL BANERJEE, 4 BONNIE BARTEL, 5 VICTOR G. CORCES, 6 CATHERINE L. DRENNAN, 7 SARAH C. R. ELGIN, 8 IRVING R. EPSTEIN, 9 ELLEN FANNING, 10 LOUIS J. CREDIT: ISTOCKPHOTOS Competencies: A Cure for Pre-Med Curriculum Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 8, 2014 Editorial Expression of Concern approaches to science teaching, curricular design, and mentoring. We strongly endorse the recommendation for transition to a competency-based curriculum for pre- medical education. There is room for dis- cussion about which specifi c competencies should be included, and there is a need to ensure that curricular changes do not dilute course content, but we foresee that this inno- vation will have a substantial positive impact toward the invigoration of undergraduate education in science, math, and engineer- ing. Specifi cally, it will simplify the develop- ment and implementation of course offerings within and between traditional disciplines as well as facilitate greater curricular innovation by science departments and multidisciplinary programs. Adoption of these reforms will provide enhanced opportunities to introduce curricular innovations that match the partic- ular strengths of individual institutions and stimulate a widespread discussion of creative advancements in undergraduate education. N ow is the time for science faculty to convene to reconsider what all future scien- tists (not just medical doctors) should know and how that material should be taught in their institutions. We encourage discussions within and between science departments of curricular revisions that take advantage of this enhanced fl exibility in keeping with the competencies recommended by the HHMI- AAMC report. VOL 334 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org Published by AAAS

Working Together to Address Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Prediction of students' performances on licensing examinations using age, race, sex, undergraduate GPAs, and MCAT scores.

“Good luck on your first day as an assistant professor, Dr. Tanner! Have a great class!” On the wall above my desk, these words scream out from an otherwise encouraging note that is adorned with many exclamation points. This note has hung on my wall since my very first day as an Assistant Professor of Biology. As I was charging off to teach my first class, a senior faculty member who had been on my hiring committee slipped this note under my office door. In moments of pause years later, I still stare up at that note and breathe a sigh of relief that I had much more than luck to guide me on my first day as a college-level teacher. Although I continue to have much to learn—as all of us do no matter the number of years of teaching experience—I did arrive at the university with both formal and informal training in science education. I had had plenty of exposure to innovative pedagogical approaches, questioning strategies, and techniques for engaging diverse audiences in learning science. As a scientist educator, I had had the privilege of many years of collaboration with outstanding K–12 educators as well as a postdoctoral fellowship in science education. However, my training has been, to say the least, unconventional compared with that of my fellow junior faculty and unique in its preparation in regard to the teaching and learning of my discipline. It will not be news to anyone reading this article that university and college teaching is to a large extent a profession with no formal training. It’s startling but true that the majority of faculty members—and lecturers who often teach large numbers of students—have no formal training in the teaching and learning of their discipline. In fact, the hiring process in university science departments is structured primarily to evaluate a faculty candidate’s ability to be a productive researcher, with success measured in number of publications and magnitude of grant funds raised. Depending on the type of institution, for example, research university, state-level university, or liberal arts college, there may be a component of the faculty interview process that probes a candidate’s teaching ability, for example, requesting a statement of teaching philosophy and requiring the candidate to teach a sample lecture class. However, this sample lecture often screens for gross inadequacies, rather than looking for stellar innovations or pedagogical skills. This lack of formal, accredited training for university and college instructors stands in stark contrast to the requirements for a high school teacher who is charged with the education of students only a year junior to college freshmen. High school teachers in the United States must be credentialed as a secondary science teacher, demonstrate subject matter competency in every subject that they will be teaching, and must continually engage in professional development in the teaching and learning of their discipline throughout their career as a science teacher. With the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind legislation, the onus is upon each precollege science teacher to become “highly qualified” in terms of formal university-level training in science education. However, no such required professional training or measurable standards for teaching are required in institutions of higher education. Many policy documents have suggested standards of teaching practice in postsecondary science education (National Research Council, 1996, 1997; Siebert and McIntosh, 2001), but the extent of implementation of these ideals is unclear and has gone relatively unstudied, although national and regional accreditation boards do look at outcomes, asking colleges and universities to assess what their students have gained from four years of study at their institutions. Nonetheless, there is a striking reversal of accountability that happens when one crosses the precollege teaching to college-level teaching boundary (Table 1). During the K–12 school years, society expects K–12 teachers to be responsible for student learning. Salaries of teachers in many states are tied to student test scores, and poor student performance can potentially invoke penalties. At a college or university, several variables in the educational universe shift. Students are the ones responsible for learning. The evaluation and compensation of college-level teachers is not DOI: 10.1187/cbe.05–12–0132 Address correspondence to: Kimberly Tanner (kdtanner@sfsu.edu). CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 5, 1–6, Spring 2006

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to describe robust rationales for integrating inquiry-based learning into undergraduate science education, and to propose that digital libraries are potentially powerful technological tools that can support inquiry-based learning goals in undergraduate science courses. Overviews of constructivism and situated cognition are provided with regard to how these two theoretical perspectives have influenced current science education reform movements, especially those that involve inquiry-based learning. The role that digital libraries can play in inquiry-based learning environments is discussed. Finally, the importance of alignment among critical pedagogical dimensions of an inquiry-based pedagogical framework is stressed in the paper, and an example of how this can be done is presented using earth science education as a context.

Given the radical changes in the nature of the science of biology and what we have learned about effective ways to teach, this is an opportune time to address the biology we teach so that it better represents the biology we do. – www.visionandchange.org For more than a decade, numerous reports have called for a rethinking and restructuring of high school and undergraduate science education to make it more relevant and accessible to a broader spectrum of students (Handelsman et al., 2006 ; Hulleman and Harackiewicz, 2009 ; National Research Council [NRC], 1996 , 1997 , 1998 , 2002 , 2003a ,b ,c , 2005 , 2008 ; National Science Foundation [NSF], 1996 ) and to base our strategies on the expanding body of research on human learning and cognition (NRC, 2000b ; Allen and Tanner, 2007 ; Morse and Jutras, 2008 ; DeHaan, 2009 , Pfund et al., 2009 , Labov et al., 2009 ). In 2009, several important publications, conferences, and events have pointed toward confluence around more interdisciplinary and interconnected approaches and themes for undergraduate education in the life sciences. These events have included the following: Release of draft curriculum frameworks in biology for the College Board's multiyear restructuring of advanced placement courses in science for high school students (see http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/draft_revised_ap_biology_curriculum.pdf). This restructuring closely follows the recommendations of a report from the NRC (2002) and calls for teaching fewer concepts in greater depth. Restructuring also requires developing and implementing means to measure students' level of conceptual understanding (Mervis, 2009a ; Wood, 2009 ). Publication of Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, a joint report from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Association of American Medical Colleges, which calls for a change in undergraduate science education away from a system based on courses to one based on “competencies.” According to the committee, “A competency-based approach will give both learners and educators more flexibility in the premedical curriculum and allow the development of more interdisciplinary and integrative courses that maintain scientific rigor, while providing a broad education.” (Executive Summary, p. 1)1 Convening of “Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education,” a summit held in Washington, DC, in July 2009 that was organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science with support from the NSF. This summit brought together >500 people to consider future pathways for undergraduate education in the life sciences (Mervis, 2009b ; Woodin et al., 2009 ).2 A report from the summit is planned for release in 2010. Publication in September 2009 of A New Biology for the Twenty-First Century by a committee under the aegis of the NRC's Board on Life Sciences (NRC, 2009 ; a podcast about the report is available at http://dels.nas.edu/dels/viewreport.cgi?id=5953). The report proposes a bold new integrated research agenda, with important implications for the future of undergraduate and K–12 science education. Convening in November 2009 of an interdisciplinary forum on synthetic biology as part of the annual National Academies Keck Futures Initiative.3 Consistent with calls to find ways to develop science curricula in conjunction with cutting-edge scientific discoveries (Jurkowski et al., 2007 ), the forum actively considered issues of education and communication about synthetic biology in conjunction with discussions of scientific, legal, and ethical aspects. A report from this event will be published by the National Academies in 2010. Thus, throughout this past year, the life sciences community has focused its attention on where biological research is likely to progress over the next several decades and how education in the life sciences might keep pace with this rethinking of research priorities and progress. The NRC (2009) report offers the most comprehensive review of these sets of issues; its recommendations for research and education agendas are summarized below.