RCN-UBE: PULSE Ambassadors - Creating a National Leadership Network to Accelerate Departmental Transformation towards Vision and Change

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The Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE) is a national effort by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health/NIGMS, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute to promote broad community adoption of the recommendations of Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (V&C). PULSE Fellows have developed programs to support life sciences departments across the nation as their faculties seek to integrate V&C's educational best practices for the benefit of the next generation of scientists. The PULSE Ambassadors program was developed to address a key need: organizational change, such as major curricular reform by faculty, often benefits from catalysis by and support of external consultants. The program was successfully piloted at ten diverse institutions, from community colleges to research universities and will now be expanded by developing a robust and diverse national network of trained Ambassadors who will bring on-campus workshops to a broad array of institutions of higher learning. Network participants will be intentionally recruited to ensure institutional, ethnic, and geographic diversity in order to benefit the broadest possible array of students, to promote greater persistence among prospective biology majors, and to advance scientific literacy and the process of science among all college students taking biology courses. The program's impacts will be evaluated with respect to successfully promoting long-term change in the departments that are engaged and components will be modified and adapted as necessary to maximize effectiveness. The PULSE Ambassadors Program is specifically designed to engage life sciences departments in critical dialogue about the faculty's vision for the implementation of V&C recommendations and goals for change over time, provide the department with the skills necessary to guide organizational change, and connect faculty with key resources of the PULSE community at large. A robust national network of Ambassadors who are representative of the institutional and demographic diversity in our country will be built to meet the increasing demand from the community. A diverse community of network participants and PULSE Ambassadors will be recruited and trained to support departmental engagement (Aim 1); stimulate organizational change through collaborations of Ambassador network participants and life sciences departments across the U.S. (Aim 2); and develop and implement a systemic assessment plan to evaluate and adaptively manage network activities (Aim 3). This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).