An award has been made to Western Washington University to form a regional network in support of the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Science Education (PULSE). Last September, the PULSE partners (HHMI, NIH, and NSF) appointed 40 Vision and Change Leadership Fellows to stimulate transformative changes in the undergraduate life science education community. Fellows from two-year colleges, liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities and research universities were selected. All Fellows met in October 2012 and organized into four working groups for developing approaches to help departments implement recommendations made in the Vision and Change report. Such improvements in how biology is taught at all types of undergraduate institutions should increase student learning of core concepts, should increase retention rates for students in the sciences, and should prepare all students to be more curious and scientifically literate citizens.
Although individual faculty have been very active in instituting reforms in their own courses, it is usually harder to transform an entire department. This proposal plans to address that challenge by forming a network of institutions in close geographical proximity so they can support and advise one another as each implements change. Tools and resources have been developed by the Leadership Fellows that will be field-tested by the different types of participating institutions in the northwest. For example, rubrics for departmental self-assessment and visits by trained Ambassadors will be provided to assist departments in adopting reforms in how life science courses are taught. Fifteen participating institutions will identify teams of faculty, administrators, and students to participate in on-line training sessions, in-person workshops, and a symposium for biology instructors in the spring of 2014. It is hoped that this network will increase awareness of the recommendations made in the Vision and Change report, accelerate the pace of adopting those recommendations by different departments, and lead to a better understanding of how change happens on diverse campuses. This regional network will expand the impact of PULSE by including institutions in Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho that are currently not represented by the PULSE Leadership Fellows. This regional network will be a "laboratory" for testing the resources that have been developed by the four PULSE working groups, and will expand to include new partners in the life sciences community in the northwest beyond the Leadership Fellows themselves. Results from the workshop and the larger conference will be shared with the life sciences community, primarily via the www.pulsecommunity.org website and by continued partnerships with other groups advocating for change in life science education in the northwest.
This project is being funded jointly by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate of Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to support Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education.
