Every area of modern biology relies on quantitative concepts but the quantitative training of life science students is rarely connected to biology and many biology students fail to appreciate its relevance. The goal of this project is to create a unified curriculum which develops the students' quantitative approaches to problems in the life sciences. This project will couple an introductory statistics course with a general biology laboratory course at the University and develop teaching units for the middle school level. The key to the long term benefits and widespread significance of this project is that a teaching circle will be formed which is interdisciplinary and includes middle school teachers. This collaborative team will be united by commitment to teach science and mathematics from an integrated, project-based, problem-solving approach. It brings together education and subject matter experts. Locally, this project will revise the manner in which biology and mathematics are being taught at the University of Portland and Portsmouth Middle School. It will impact future teachers through student-teacher placements and through the University's teaching methods courses in the School of Education. Because flexible teaching modules which couple statistics and general biology and teaching units for middle schools will be developed, field tested, evaluated, and disseminated, the outcomes from this project will contribute to systemic reform of science/mathematics education at the national level.
