Establishing links across levels of biological organization, and impressing upon students the importance of those links, are two of the most difficult goals in biology today, and two of the most exciting. In order to bridge gaps between subdisciplines of biology, students must be able to understand the basic vocabulary of the various disciplines, and, further, to recognize the kinds of questions that are asked and quantitative approaches used to answer those questions. In order to lead students toward combining information from multiple classes taught at several levels of biological organization, an experimental plan linking four plant biology courses is proposed. each class is a unit within itself, but the threads tying each to the others are designed to build quantitative skills and technical competence. This structure should draw students into the process of discovery as they recognize links between levels of plant biology, while confidently exploring their own biological questions using familiar equipment and mathematical models. More specifically, the goals of the curricular innovations proposed here include: Integration of levels of biology, within plant sciences as a theme Development of quantitative skills both in the lab and in the field Establishment of field and lab experiments as partners in exploring biological questions. The strategy for lining class content, and for developing stronger quantitative skills, revolves around student mastery of the measurement of photosynthesis and respiration using a LiCor 6400 portable photosynthesis system, both in the laboratory at Bowdoin College and in the distinctive vegetative communities in the fled at the nearby Coastal Studies Center (CSC). As students gather plant physiological data, they will be introduced to the value of and differences between mechanistic and empirical models of biological processes, using two widely accepted models of photosynthesis as examples. Using dataloggers and various sensors at CSC, students will also gather realistic values for some of the environmental inputs used in these models. In each of the four classes, these same pieces of equipment and portions of the same models will be used, but with a different focus, building a rich base of information from cellular to ecophysiological levels which ideally will foster integrative thinking and spur independently inquiry. *
