GRC on Undergraduate Biology Education Research: Improving Diversity, Equity, and Learning

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The Gordon Research Conference on Undergraduate Biology Education Research (GRC UBER) will provide the biology education community a five day conference to bring scholars together to advance our understanding of how to better serve the diverse student population in higher education. The conference will focus on contemporary approaches to developing capacity, equity and inclusiveness of programs by disseminating cutting edge research and proven models. The conference expects to bring together scholars from communities that rarely interact but who work in overlapping arenas to synthesize our understanding of what it takes to more systemically change undergraduate biology programs. The meeting aspires to cultivate collaborations and new directions for future research. Other issues to be addressed in conference sessions include national trends, best practices for program-level transformation, large-scale multi-campus research projects, integrating research experiences into the curriculum, connections to graduate education, and highlights from NSF-funded Research Coordination Networks (RCN) in Undergraduate Biology Education.Coordination and understanding of the disparate attempts to improve equity and efficacy of undergraduate biology education for all students continues to challenge many local, regional and national efforts. This conference will foster the next generation of questions and issues to accelerate research and practice, inform national priorities, and promote the development of diverse biological talent and inclusivity in programs. It will be of interest to science education researchers, educators, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, campus leaders, scientists, education and scientific society leaders, policy leaders, publishers, and the nation's technology industry. The major goals for this important national gathering will build on the goals of the highly successful 2015 GRC UBER and are to: 1) expose a diversity of attendees to state-of-the-art approaches to UBER methods, concepts and models; 2) engender deep discussions about the next generation of research questions that will accelerate UBER; and, 3) continue to build a community that shares a common language, commitment to, and conceptual understanding of issues related equity, access, diversity and efficacy in biology education. The end result will be a robust synthesis of research findings, identification of gaps in the research, as well as the development of new research collaborations and directions that will lead to implementation of more effective strategies that result in improved undergraduate biology learning and instruction.