From the President

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Community is a term currently applied in both science and science education. We often think of in biological terms as a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. But within human context, the term community means those sharing a common intent or belief. These communities share resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other common conditions affecting the identity of the participants. At NABT, these communities are found in secondary, two-year, and four-year colleges and universities, just to name a few. However, it is not just within each but between communities that interaction, intent, and beliefs exist. At the July American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and National Science Foundation (NSF) Conference (Transforming Undergraduate Biology Education: Mobilizing the Community for Change), NABT was highlighted as the organization that develops among life science educators. NSF/AAAS Conference convened more than 500 college and university faculty and more than 100 science societies (http://www.visionandchange.org/). According to Dr. James P. Collins, NSF's Assistant Director for Biological Sciences, the purpose of the meeting was to prepare a generation of scientists to communicate science as a 'precise, predictive, and reliable' way of knowing the world. efforts of NSF and AAAS, along with HHMI and MBS, over the past two years culminated with a challenge to biologists and biology educators to begin to change undergraduate biology education. Alan I. Leshner of AAAS stated, Scientists must find new ways to engage with the public. One cannot just exhort 'we all agree you should agree with us.' It's a much more interactive process that's involved. It's time consuming and can be tedious. But it's very important. He continued, The goal of undergraduate education should be to give students a 'fundamental knowledge of what science is, and what it is not, along with some key concepts.' Leshner, AAAS CEO and Conference Co-Chair, also serves as Executive Editor of the journal, Science. He emphasized that technologies are allowing scientists to ask questions and obtain knowledge at an incredible rate. Estimates of how the knowledge base of biology is increasing overwhelm me. You often hear that the knowledge base in molecular genetics alone is doubling every 12 months. How can we as scientists and science educators, cope with so rapid an increase of knowledge? With each discipline of biology exploring its own area of content and discoveries, the idea of a biology education has become more difficult. However, even as these disciplines have developed separately over the past 50 years, other disciplines have begun to unify them. Over the past ten years, a colleague of mine (a well-known sedge biologist and taxonomist) has had to integrate the newer methods of DNA and protein analysis in his field. Another colleague, a herpetologist, is developing techniques of turtle classification by examining the mitochondrial DNA of turtle toenails. Why have the NSF, AAAS, HHMI, and AIBS put so much emphasis on undergraduate biology education over the past few years? Simply put, Now is the time! Now is the time for our members to become fully engaged, involved in assessment, creating opportunities, capitalizing on institutional change, and bringing teaching in line with how biologists work (Dr. Wanda E. Ward, Acting Assistant Director, Directorate for Education and Human Resources, NSF). One area of change recommended during the Conference was the development of between these varied societies. Specifically, NABT was highlighted as the organization that was important in developing among life-science educators. Now is the time to bring the varied disciplines together to forge a unified and focused effort on undergraduate biology education. NSF Director Arden Bement stated that the status quo in science education is not achieving the results we need. …