Vision and Change in Biology Undergraduate Education, A Call for Action—Initial Responses

On July 15–17, 2009, 544 biology faculty from 2- and 4-year colleges and universities, along with researchers, administrators, students, and other educational stakeholders from around the country, met in Washington, DC, to help create a blueprint for the future of undergraduate biology education (Summers, 2009 ). Hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the meeting set out to mobilize the nation's undergraduate biology educators to ensure that the biology they teach in their classrooms reflects the biology they practice in the lab and field, and that all students—majors and nonmajors alike—gain a better understanding of the nature of science and the natural world (Mervis, 2009 ). The charge for the meeting (Transforming Undergraduate Education in Biology: Mobilizing the Community for Change) noted that the need for change reflects the radical changes in the science itself as well as the knowledge we are gaining about how people learn and the best ways to ensure that learning takes place. The meeting concentrated on how people have effected change, the results when they did so, and how the attendees and their colleagues could most effectively incorporate this knowledge and understanding into their own approaches to undergraduate education in biology. Videos, slides, and other materials from the meeting are posted at the conference website (AAAS, 2009a ). A culminating summary publication is anticipated in spring 2010.

PULSE Vision & Change Rubrics

Note from the EditorsToo often, biology has been considered by both students and faculty as the ideal major for the scientifically inclined but mathematically challenged, even though the advantage of quantitative approaches in biology has always been apparent.Increasingly, biologists are utilizing mathematical skills to create simulations or manage and query large data sets.The need for basic mathematical and computer science (CS) literacy among biologists has never been greater.But does this require a fundamental change in the organization of the undergraduate biology curriculum?What is the utility of math/CS in different areas of biology?How can we best provide math/CS instruction to biologists so that the utility is appreciated?Do all biology students require a stronger math/CS foundation, or only those interested in research careers?Given the speed at which technology changes, what is the best preparation?Three different points of view are offered below.Dr. Roger Brent, President and Director of the Molecular Sciences Institute, reflects on the "innumeracy" common among biologists and argues that significant insights into biological problems may be gained from better mathematical intuition.

A large part of the biology community, including faculty, students, and administrators, as well as representatives of professional societies and funding agencies, met in Washington, D.C., in 2009 to discuss how to bring biology undergraduate education into the 21st century.The aim was to ensure that biology faculty teach in a way that reflects exciting changes in the discipline and current knowledge about how people learn, while making use of new technologies.The initial results were Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education: A Call for Action, a document summarizing the need for change and proposing how that need could be met, and a Web presence to encourage continual dialogue (http://visionandchange.org).The print copy of the document has been distributed to more than 6000 people thus far, and the Web page has had more than 11,000 hits.Many life sciences societies and departments are using Vision and Change as a basis for discussions of how to improve undergraduate education within their field, and there is increasing reference to it in national reports (National Research Council, 2012; President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2012).Funding agencies are also reporting that many proposals are citing Vision and Change, and the projects they describe reflect recommendations made within that document.Now that the vision is set, the next step is to identify mechanisms for catalyzing change and to document the outcomes of change.Such change is not easy to achieve or catalogue, because it must occur on a scale that crosses institutions and spans the discipline.The agencies involved in the original effort are now supporting a three-pronged effort to 1) understand how change takes place, 2) catalogue and analyze

In this editorial we link the articles published in this Special Issue with the framework from Vision and Change and summarize findings from the editorial process of assembling the Special Issue.

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 ).

This editorial discusses next steps toward sustaining the journal.

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are playing a critical role today in helping America overcome a looming shortage of scientists and engineers who are vital to the nation's future economic growth and competitiveness. Despite meager funding and a lack of public recognition, these educational institutions are producing a large share of the nation's African American graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

“I have to teach someone to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. How am I supposed to do that? What should I start with? How can this be so hard?” I have found that teaching anything to another person is rife with far more decisions and dilemmas than I could have ever imagined at first. Years ago, I had a college roommate who wanted to participate in a summer teaching program. For her interview, she had to develop a lesson plan to teach someone else how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Have you ever thought about teaching someone else how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? She had asked for my input, and once we started to really consider the possibilities, our minds reeled. How would you start? What would you do first? Next? After that? Who was the learner anyway? And had they made a sandwich before? Were they allergic to peanuts? How old were they? Should we let them have a knife? Should we show them how first? Talk them through it? Let them have a go at it on their own? Should we first teach them the names of all the tools and things we were going to use? Should we ask them why they needed to learn how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the first place? What were the critical issues in teaching someone how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Much like in the “PBJ Dilemma” as we came to call it, there are many decisions to be made in designing effective learning experiences in undergraduate biology classes—and instructors are making these decisions constantly. It can seem overwhelming, yet the research literatures from cognitive science, psychology, and science education about how people learn suggest guidelines about constructing effective learning experiences (National Research Council [NRC], 1999 ). Much like the PBJ Dilemma, the order in which we decide to do things with students when we teach is critical, yet the order of things happening in a class session often goes undiscussed and unexamined. At first glance, the most pressing teaching dilemmas in our biology classrooms—student motivation, student retention of information, student understanding of difficult concepts—may seem unrelated to the order in which things are happening; however, what we do first, second, third, and so on can have many ramifications. For many instructors who have primarily learned from and used a lecture-based teaching approach, considerations of order have been primarily about the order of ideas. With the increasing use of active-learning strategies, class sessions are moving from having a single component—a lecture—to having many components over the course of even 50 minutes (e.g., a video clip, a pair discussion on a biology-based problem, a clicker question, a mini-lecture, and a final index card reflection). So, what is the optimal order for sequencing these elements to maximize student learning of biology?

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.

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 pKNOCK series of broad-host-range mobilizable suicide vectors for gene knockout and targeted DNA insertion into the chromosome of gram-negative bacteria.

The Next Five Years

BioMoleculesAlive.org is a collection of digital resources sponsored by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It is part of a larger effort called the BioSciEdNet (BEN)11 The abbreviations used are: BEN, BioSciEdNet; AAAS, American Association for the Advancement of Science; EPD, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Education and Professional Development Committee. initiative (www.biosciednet.org; see Fig. 1), which includes more than 10 related libraries from organization such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and BioQUEST. The collection will include resources in five areas: software, visual resources, curriculum resources, reviews, and articles from Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education. BioMoleculesAlive.org is designed to benefit the educational community in a number of ways. First it is intended to make a variety of electronic and digital resources available for teaching, learning, and research in biochemistry and molecular biology. These resources will be archived on the BioMoleculesAlive.org server, which should enable us to avoid a phenomenon sometimes called “link rot” where Internet resources disappear over time for a number of reasons; for example, universities upgrade their servers from time to time, and not all links may be updated to reflect the change in the server name. Second, and perhaps most important for those developing these resources, it will provide a peer-reviewed environment for the presentation of your efforts. The creators of these resources recognize the effort they take and the impact they can have on the classroom. The documented review process that is integral to BioMoleculesAlive.org can be presented along with the digital resources themselves to committees that review applications for tenure and promotion. At this point BioMoleculesAlive.org is still on the drawing board. However, the design and database structure of this site will be similar to the other BEN member sites, particularly MicrobeLibrary.org (the American Society of Microbiology digital library) and apsarchives.org (the American Physiological Society digital library). Instructions for on-line submission of all resources will be available. Once submitted, responsible BioMoleculesAlive.org steering committee members (see Table I) will distribute the materials to volunteer reviewers from within the education community. Accepted materials will then be posted in the library. The site is designed to serve the education community at all levels from elementary school through college and medical school. Submissions will be assigned a suggested target audience to enable users to identify appropriate materials. Digital materials that are submitted directly to BioMoleculesAlive.org will be available free of charge for download and use. At this point the only foreseeable costs involve access to articles published in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, which will only be available to individuals and institutions that subscribe to that journal. BioMoleculesAlive.org will have a built-in search engine that will allow users to identify appropriate materials for their courses. In addition, the site will be designed with input from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Education and Professional Development Committee (EPD). Part of the submission process will include identifying the educational level of the resource as well as the areas of biochemistry and molecular biology covered. These will be coordinated with the EPD's guidelines for undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology to further assist users. Support is pending from the National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) program under the umbrella of the BEN initiative (see Fig. 1) headed by Yolanda George of AAAS. With 2 years of support, our goal is to construct a web portal to biochemistry and molecular biology education resources built upon a fully searchable database. BioMoleculesAlive.org will integrate seamlessly with the other member sites at the BEN portal (www.biosciednet.org) and will be modeled after the American Society of Microbiology education site (www.microbelibrary.org). Thanks for asking. Critical needs are found in two areas: content and reviewers. Most of the National Science Foundation (NSF) support will be dedicated to web design and database development. Thus, content development, submission, and review are going to require volunteers. Once BioMoleculesAlive.org is on line, opportunities to submit and review digital objects will be available through a web page. Until then, please contact Paul Craig (pac8612@osfmail.isc.rit.edu) or Kelly Gull (kgull@asbmb.faseb.org) if you would like to submit resources to BioMoleculesAlive.org, and we will direct these resources to the members of the steering committee. Organization of the BEN initiative. BioSciEdNet is a collaboration of 13 different organizations (only five are shown in this chart) devoted to providing excellent resources for teaching and research in the Biological Sciences. BioMoleculesAlive.org is the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology component of this collaboration; representative resources that are expected in this library are shown subordinate to BioMoleculesAlive.org in this chart.

There is a long history of intervention programs to increase the numbers and enhance the participation of students in scientific research and the pursuit of scientific careers. Many federal agencies have supported these kinds of programs with a goal of enhancing the diversity of the scientific workforce. Most of these programs operate under the assumption that actively engaging students in research and related professional activities will stimulate their interest in and understanding of science and encourage them to pursue research careers. However, there has been little formal investigation of the shortand long-term effects of such programs and the efficacy of the various program elements. Even though there have been several evaluations of both the federal programs themselves (e.g., National Research Council, 2005) and of individual institutional programs subject to evaluation (e.g., Building Engineering & Science Talent, 2004), there has been little primary research focused on the variables that make particular interventions work for minority students—and why other programs are not successful. Since 2005, the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and its Division of Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) have made two sets of grant awards in response to the NIH’s Request for Applications (RFA) under the Efficacy of Interventions to Promote Research Careers program (RFA-GM05-009) and have recently received applications for a fourth round of awards (RFA-GM-08-005). These RFAs were established specifically to “support research that will test assumptions regarding existing or potential interventions that are intended to increase the preparedness for careers in biomedical research, with a particular interest in those interventions specifically designed to increase the number of underrepresented minority students entering careers in biomedical and behavioral research” (page 1). Undertaking research to study the efficacy of specific interventions in any human population is fraught with many challenges. With increasing expectations for accountability, people who may not have conducted this kind of research previously now must become familiar with new protocols (e.g., statistical), new research regulations (e.g., seeking authorization from Institutional Review Boards to work with human subjects), a different research literature, and new venues for communicating their findings. Many scientists may not have had to confront such a large number of variables, many of which cannot be actively controlled, before engaging in this kind of research. As a result, many scientific researchers are not fully prepared to do the kind of research that has been called for by the NIH RFAs. In an effort to promote the submission of high-quality grant proposals—and to encourage expanded and imaginative research in this area—the MORE Division asked the National Academies to organize a workshop that would examine the current state of research about interventions that could significantly influence the participation of underrepresented minorities in pursuing research careers in the biomedical and behavioral sciences and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The ultimate goals of this workshop were to help researchers develop appropriate kinds of research questions that measure the contributions of various factors to the success of DOI: 10.1187/cbe.07–06–0034 Address correspondence to: Jay B. Labov (jlabov@nas.edu).