Algae and the Ecosystem: A Laboratory Project for Undergraduates

9452561 Burnett该项目的目标是为生物学、植物学、环境生物学和微生物学的本科生和非本科生提供持续的实验室体验，以提高他们的调查技能，并激发他们对科学问题的兴趣。这项提议来自伊利诺伊州东部社区学院的生物系，这是一所位于伊利诺伊州东南部的两年制公共资助学院。IECC和生物系服务的学生大多来自农村地区，他们上过高中，那里的科学项目因缺乏资金和教学资源而受到限制。由于班级规模往往很小，许多当地高中往往很难提供全职理科教师。因此，社区学院系统为许多农村学生提供了第一次机会，让他们熟悉调查科学和更复杂的科学工具和方法。拟议的实验室改进项目旨在改变学生对科学的看法，将其简单地视为一系列“食谱实验”，并允许他们深入探索一个关键的科学问题-浮游植物(通常称为藻类)在生态系统中的重要性。在学院的实验室中增加一个现代培养孵化器系统，将为支持这种本科生科学研究方法提供载体。

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.