Sustainable Interdisciplinary Research to Inspire Undergraduate Success

最近，人们迫切呼吁为21世纪的科学劳动力培养更多的学生，并增加进入科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）职业的学生的多样性。在这个项目中，萨克拉门托州立大学是一所拥有多元化学生群体的大型综合性城市四年制大学，旨在通过建立一个吸引生物科学教职员工和学生的STEM教育社区，提高本科生的成功程度。校园科学教育者和社区合作伙伴对他们特别感兴趣的问题进行跨学科研究，并对整个国家具有普遍重要性；人类对河流生态的影响，在这种情况下，流经学院门口的美国河。该项目的教学方法是围绕“本科生物学教育的愿景和变化：行动呼吁”的租户建立的。它的重点是在大学内建立社区，以确保所有生物学学生都能体验到研究项目的智力刺激，并建立教师学习社区，以确保持续的机构承诺为所有学生提供高质量的本科教育。采用的主要机制是开发和实施基于研究性的课堂体验，在这种体验中，各级训练的学生探索一个单一的大规模问题。该项目涉及生物系与教育研究人员合作，在科学教育研究、广泛的课程开发、师资建设和跨学科项目开发方面进行合作。该项目将对12门生物课程进行改造。14名终身教职员工将参加一个教师学习社区，以实施循证教学实践，在课堂上有效利用技术，并在多个课程中跨子学科合作，解决重大科学问题。整合一系列输入，团队将使用基于设计的研究和开发策略迭代地改进模块。这门课程的更广泛的影响是，它是可持续的，可扩展的，并且很容易被其他机构采用，因为它利用了现有的课程预算，并且对单个教师实验室的财务没有过度的压力。该项目由生物科学理事会和本科教育司教育和人力资源理事会共同资助，以支持应对《本科教育的愿景与变革：行动呼吁》http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/所提出的挑战

There have been recent urgent calls to train more students for the 21st Century scientific workforce and to increase the diversity of students entering Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers. Many studies illustrate the positive influence of research experiences on the performance, retention, attitudes and career decisions of undergraduate science majors In this project Sacramento State, a large comprehensive urban 4-year university with a diverse student body, aims to increase undergraduate student success by building a STEM Education Community that engages Biological Sciences faculty and students, campus science educators and community partners in interdisciplinary research on a problem of particular interest to them and of general importance to the entire nation; human impact on the ecology of rivers, in this case the American River flowing at the college's doorstep.The project's teaching approach is built around the tenants of Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action. Its emphasis is on community building within the university to ensure that all biology students experience the intellectual stimulation of a research project and that faculty learning communities be established to ensure ongoing institutional commitment to a quality undergraduate education for all students. The primary mechanism employed is development and implementation of research-based classroom experiences in which students at all levels of training explore a single large-scale problem. The project involves the biology department, in cooperation with educational researchers, in science education research, extensive curriculum development, faculty development and interdisciplinary program development. Twelve biology courses will be transformed by this project. Fourteen tenured faculty will participate in a Faculty Learning Community in order to implement evidence-based teaching practices, effective use of technology in the classroom and to collaborate across their sub-disciplines in multiple courses to solve big scientific problems. Integrating a range of inputs, the team will iteratively improve the modules using a design-based research and development strategy. Among the broader impacts of this course is that it is sustainable and scalable and easily adapted by other institutions because it utilizes existing course budgets and places no undue pressure on individual faculty laboratory finances. This project is funded jointly by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate of Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education in support of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education: A Call to Action http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/