Interdisciplinary (99) This project is forming the foundation for the science curriculum in the Honors College, a brand new liberal arts college being built within the larger Florida Atlantic University system. Through this project the College is developing a discovery-based approach to learning by introducing year-long student projects in first and second year biology and chemistry courses. It is promoting interdisciplinarity by creating educational links among the sciences and between mathematics and the sciences. It is bringing science and mathematics out of the classroom and into the community, using local ponds, lakes, forests and greenways as science laboratories. And for both faculty and students, it is integrating teaching, learning and research in a holistic form of scholarship. The common thread in discovery-based learning, interdisciplinary links, and the community laboratory is long-term environmental research projects in which student and faculty teams study the water quality in the dozens of area ponds, the diversity of wildlife in the more than 250 acres of preserves, and the impact of a growing population on the environment. Such an approach is possible because the College is located in the midst of the planned -- but not yet completed -- community of Abacoa, a mixed residential and urban center which is being built around the college campus. The community projects are bring supported in the laboratory through the use of a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC- MS), which provides a powerful means for detecting and identifying chemical compounds; and a geographic information system (GIS) lab, which provides a variety of tools for spatial analysis and modeling of large heterogeneous data sets. The GIS lab is also providing a computer classroom for team- teaching new, interdisciplinary, linked courses. The effort is an adaptation and expansion of NSF-funded projects that have focused on discovery-based learning and undergraduate research activities as a means of achieving interdisciplinary learning in the sciences.
