9452561 Burnett The goal of the project is to provide ongoing laboratory experiences for undergraduate majors and non-majors in Biology, Botany, Environmental Biology, and Microbiology that will enhance their investigative skills and stimulate their interest in scientific issues. The proposal originates from the Biology Department at Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, a two-year, publicly-supported college in southeastern Illinois. The students served by IECC and the Biology Department are largely from rural areas, having attended high schools where science programs are limited by a lack of funds and instructional resources. Since class sizes are often very small, many local high schools are often hardpressed to provide fulltime science faculty. As a result, the community college system provides the first opportunity many rural students have to become familiarized with investigative science and more sophisticated scientific tools & methods. The proposed laboratory improvement project is designed to change students' perception of science as simply a succession of "cookbook experiments" and allow them to explore, in depth, a key scientific issue - the significance of phytoplankton (commonly referred to as algae), in the ecosystem. The addition of a modern culture incubator system in the college's laboratory will provide the vehicle for supporting this investigative approach to undergraduate science.
