9354785 Schneider The New Science Project will change the way Grinnell College teaches introductory science in biology chemistry, mathematics, physics, and psychology. This program responds to the barriers that traditionally discourage the successful pursuit of science by students belonging to underrepresented groups in science. The New Science Project will serve other colleges and universities by 1) offering a student-center approach to the problem of under-representation in science and 2) providing an example of long-term, division-wide curricular reform, based on encouraging and building on individual teaching experiments. Nationally, introductory science and mathematics courses need prompt and serious attention to maintain their productivity of future scientists, engineers and mathematicians overall, and to entice new students from traditionally under-represented groups into these fields. With faculty release time from this grant, Grinnell College will develop a coordinated series of new, interactive courses in a highly experimental fashion to determine what course structures most effectively make introductory science accessible to all populations, and the engaging starting point to science and mathematics that it should be. We will encourage a variety of models, some as add-on workshops, some as complete course revisions, so that we can make useful comparisons of different techniques in the same college environment.
