RCN-UBE: Creation of the Biology Educator/Researcher Cross-Segment Collective

2012年总统科学技术顾问委员会报告表示，需要将STEM大学毕业生数量增加100万，以满足当前和未来对STEM专业人员的需求。在随后的讨论中，社区大学和转学生一直是一个被忽视的群体。这些人尤其重要，因为全国大约有四分之一的大学生在两年制大学开始他们的高等教育生涯，其中包括不成比例的代表性不足的学生。生物教育者/研究人员跨部门集体（BERCC）旨在通过促进由两年制和四年制院校的教师组成的教师学习社区（FLC）的形成，改善社区学院和转学生的成果。FLC成员将合作并迭代地开发基于证据的教学实践或计划，评估其有效性，分享他们的经验，并通过生物学教育出版物，会议演讲和BERCC网站传播最终成果。这些伙伴关系将使邻近的学院和大学之间的联系更加紧密，为学生提供更好的教育体验，并为全国各地的教师提供更丰富的教育资源。BERCC旨在改善社区学院和转校生在生物科学方面的教育成果。具体来说，该组织的目标是：1)在多所高等教育机构的生物学课程或项目中增加循证实践的实施，以提高学生的学习成绩；2)形成由代表各种机构类型的个人组成的教师学习社区，以发展目标1)中提到的实践；3)以学术方式评估目标1和目标2的实施情况，以捕捉跨机构背景下的学生成果，同时为不断增长的生物教育研究（BER）做出贡献。BERCC将利用BER社区的现有资源，包括生物教育研究促进会（SABER）、科学教学暑期学院（SI）、微生物学和生物教育杂志（JMBE）和CourseSource杂志。通过在加州和北卡罗莱纳州这两个地区试行这一项目，BERCC将建立一个可持续的模式，将致力于改善社区大学和转学生群体成果的两年制和四年制同事聚集在一起。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The 2012 President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Report expressed the need to increase the number of STEM college graduates by one million to fill current and future demand for STEM professionals. In the ensuing discussions, community-college and transfer students have been a neglected population. These individuals are particularly relevant as roughly one-quarter of college students nationwide begin their higher-education career at a two-year institution, including a disproportionate number of underrepresented students. The Biology Educator/Researcher Cross-Segment Collective (BERCC) aims to improve community college and transfer student outcomes by facilitating the formation of faculty learning communities (FLC) comprised of faculty from two- and four-year institutions. FLC members will work to collaboratively and iteratively develop evidence-based teaching practices or programs, assess their effectiveness, and share their experiences and disseminate the resulting products through biology education publications, conference presentations, and the BERCC website. These partnerships will lead to closer ties between neighboring colleges and universities, improved educational experiences for students, and a greater wealth of educational resources for instructors across the country. BERCC aims to improve educational outcomes for community-college and transfer students in the biological sciences. Specifically, the Collective's objectives are to: 1) Increase implementation of evidence-based practices in biology courses or programs to improve student outcomes at multiple higher education institutions; 2) Form faculty learning communities comprised of individuals representing a variety of institution types to develop the practices mentioned in objective 1); and 3) Assess implementation of objectives 1 and 2 in a scholarly manner to capture student outcomes across institutional contexts, while contributing to the growing body of Biology Education Research (BER). BERCC will leverage existing resources in the BER community, including the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER), the Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching (SI), the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education (JMBE) and the journal CourseSource. By piloting this program at two regions across the country, California and North Carolina, BERCC will establish a sustainable model to bring together two- and four-year colleagues who are committed to improving outcomes for their community college and transfer student populations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.