Meeting report: the 2004 National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology.

In 2002, a National Research Council (NRC) Committee was established to organize a series of National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate Education in Biology (NASIUEB). The goal of these Institutes is to help undergraduate faculty in the life sciences, particularly those teaching large classes at research universities, apply findings from recent research about learning to improve their teaching in ways that will enhance student understanding and retention of biological concepts. The first of these Institutes took place at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (UW–Madison) during August 2003. It was a ‘‘pilot conference,’’ including primarily biologists already involved in educational reforms and intended to provide proof-ofconcept for an intensive teaching workshop as well as ideas on how best to implement one. As reported in Cell Biology Education a year ago (Wood and Gentile, 2003), this meeting was judged a great success by the participants, and planning was begun for a second workshop aimed at the target faculty described above. The second Summer Institute was also held at UW– Madison, August 16–20, 2004, with major funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in addition to support from the National Academies and the host university. As codirectors of this Institute, we worked with an active Steering Committee and local organizers to plan and implement the meeting. Instructors for the Institute were biologist-educators drawn from a variety of institutions; several had been participants in the 2003 pilot workshop. A complete list of the instructors and facilitators who participated can be found on the Institute’s Web site at http://AcademiesSummerInstitute.org/. The three dominant themes of the meeting were 1) active learning—ways to promote interactive student engagement during class in place of standard lectures; 2) assessment— ways to make the monitoring of student understanding a continual, integral part of the teaching process; and 3) diversity—ways to design instruction that is effective for populations of students with diverse backgrounds, learning styles, goals, genders, and ethnicities. Participants were urged to adopt the standard of ‘‘scientific teaching’’ (Handelsman et al., 2004)—making changes, assessing their effects on student learning, and then further modifying teaching strategy based on the assessment results. Admission to the Institute was by competitive application and was offered preferentially to those involved in teaching large introductory biology courses at research universities. Potential participants applied as teams of two or three from the same institution, with each team including one or two junior faculty members and one senior faculty member or administrator. A required component of the application was a commitment from the team’s institution to cover travel expenses and to support team members in implementing teaching innovations following their return home. In addition, applicants pledged to collaborate at the Institute in the development of a ‘‘teachable unit’’ (TU), involving up to a week of class and laboratory activities, and after returning home, to implement at least one of the TUs developed at the Institute as well as a mentoring seminar for supervisors of undergraduate researchers (described further below). From a total of 37 completed team applications, 19 teams were chosen to participate in the Institute. The Steering Committee selected these applications on the basis of congruence between stated team goals and the Institute’s goals of improving large introductory classes, quality of applicants’ statements of purpose as judged by the Steering Committee, extent of institutional commitment, and, to a lesser extent, geographic and institutional diversity. The meeting was at least as exciting as the pilot Institute in 2003, but in different ways, because many of the 2004 participants were new to the ideas presented. As an enticement for junior participants, opportunities had been arranged with appropriate UW–Madison departments for them to present seminars on their scientific research prior to DOI: 10.1187/cbe.04-07-0057 Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected].