Making Biology Relevant to Undergraduates

Terry R. McGuire always assumed that his students understood the relevance of their biology coursework to their lives outside the classroom, and he expected their grades to fall along a normal bell curve. But when he returned from a professional development experience in 2002, his life as a professor was forever changed. McGuire, who teaches genetics at Rutgers University, had attended a Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER; www.sencer.net) Summer Institute. On his return, he began to make small shifts in his teaching approach, sharing course-relevant current events and assigning "one-minute papers" at the end of each class. As a result, more of his students began earning As and Bs, and they were connecting science to their lives and to society as a whole. Impressed and reinvigorated, McGuire returned to the SENCER Summer Institute in subsequent years, bringing colleagues to also benefit from the experience. The SENCER program, which began formally in 2001, was the vision of David Burns; Karen Oates, currently Peterson Family Dean of Arts and Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute; and Ric Wiebl, currently director of the American Association for Advancement of Science's (AAAS) Center for Careers in Science and Technology; among others. "We didn't invent anything; we gave a name to it. Aristotle was doing the same kind of thing," said Burns, now the principal investigator of SENCER. With initial funding from the National Science Founda...
Source: Eye on Education - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news