Growth of a community: ASBMB project to create resources to support the biochemistry and molecular biology community and education (348.1)

Abstract

A consortium of federal and private foundations with biological scientific community resulted in the creation of the strategic document/plan “Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education, a Call to Action”. Principle findings of the plan include a need for core concepts and competencies, building communities for cultural change to develop educational scholars. In support of the key points of “Vision”, the National Science Foundation established the Research Coordination Networks‐Undergraduate Biology Education program to support such collaborations. The ASBMB has been a participant in both programs and in 2010 was funded an NSF RCN‐UBE to engage the BMB community to create core concepts in the field, generate a central resource to support the concepts and their assessment. The initial phase of the project involved starting the BMB community to ask key questions about core concepts and unpack the important components of each concept. Using surveys, small, regional and national meetings a series of core concepts have been developed resulting in a series of publications disseminating the results in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education Journal. The current phase of the project is to transition to build assessment toolkits for faculty to use as they align the foundational concepts. The first of several meeting have already begun to create specific learning objectives, goals, assessments and teaching stratagies that will be used by and for the BMB scientific community. This presentation will provide the history and evolution of the ASBMB project. NSF RCN‐UBE 0957205.