Midwest Vision and Change Leadership Fellows Midwest Regional Planning Meeting

华盛顿大学获得了一项奖励，将于2013年4月12日至14日组织并举办一次研讨会，以支持本科生生命科学教育合作伙伴关系（PULSE）。去年9月，PULSE合作伙伴（HHMI、NIH和NSF）任命了40名愿景与变革领导力研究员，以刺激本科生生命科学教育界的变革。所有的研究员于2012年10月会面，此后组织成四个工作组，以应对改革各类本科院校生物学教学方式的不同挑战。“愿景与变革领导力”奖学金的重点是生命科学系如何鼓励和奖励教职员工为改善本科生生命科学教育所做的努力。这样的改进应该增加学生的学习，应该提高学生在科学方面的保留率，应该让所有的学生都成为更好奇、更有科学素养的公民。目前的奖励是资助密苏里州圣路易斯的一个讲习班，为来自中西部和大平原地区各种机构类型的九名领导研究员提供资金。其中一名参与者是领导委员会的成员，该委员会负责协调所有40名研究员的工作，其他参与者是方案四个工作组的成员。本次研讨会的主要目标是计划召开一次关于采纳《愿景与变革》建议的区域会议，该会议将与学院和大学生物教育者协会（ACUBE）的秋季会议同时举行。希望这次会议将促进形成一个区域网络，开始协调这一广大地理区域的教育改革努力。这次区域性会议将扩大PULSE的影响，与北达科他州和南达科他州、堪萨斯州、伊利诺伊州、密歇根州和肯塔基州等邻近州的机构接触，这些机构目前没有PULSE领导研究员的代表。虽然这个区域网络将是测试四个PULSE工作组正在开发的资源的几个“实验室”之一，但讲习班组织者认识到，在推动“愿景与变革”的努力方面，该国的每个区域都面临一些不同的挑战。中西部地区面临的一个挑战是让更多的社区大学教师参与未来的“愿景与变革”活动。研讨会和大型会议的结果将主要通过www.pulsecommunity.org网站与生命科学界共享。

An award has been made to Washington University to organize and conduct a workshop from April 12-14, 2013 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. All Fellows met in October, 2012 and have since organized into four working groups to address different challenges to reforming how biology is taught at all types of undergraduate institutions. The Vision and Change Leadership Fellows are focusing on how life science departments can encourage and reward faculty members' efforts to improve undergraduate life sciences education. Such improvements should increase student learning, should increase retention rates for students in the sciences, and should prepare all students to be more curious and scientifically literate citizens. The current award is to fund a workshop in St. Louis, MO for nine of the Leadership Fellows from a variety of institution types located within the Midwest and Great Plains region. One of the participants is a member of the Leadership Council that is coordinating the efforts of all 40 Fellow and the other participants are members of the four PULSE working groups. The major goal of this workshop is to plan a regional conference on adopting the Vision and Change recommendations that will coincide with a fall meeting of the Association of College and University Biology Educators (ACUBE). It is hoped that the conference will catalyze formation of a regional network that will begin coordinating educational reform efforts in this large geographic area. This regional conference will expand the impact of PULSE by reaching out to institutions from adjacent states such as North and South Dakota, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, and Kentucky, that are currently not represented by the PULSE Leadership Fellows. While this regional network will be one of several "laboratories" for testing the resources being developed by the four PULSE working groups, the workshop organizers recognize that each region of the country faces somewhat different challenges in moving Vision and Change efforts forward. One challenge for the Midwest is to engage a larger number of community college faculty in future Vision and Change activities. Results from the workshop and the larger conference will be shared with the life sciences community, primarily via the www.pulsecommunity.org website.