Mission
The Coalition for Education in the Life Sciences (CELS) is a national coalition of professional societies in the biological sciences. The mission of CELS is to improve undergraduate education in the life sciences by bringing the expertise and resources of the life sciences professional societies to bear upon critical issues relating to life science undergraduate education in the United States.

CELS is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Exxon Education Foundation and by fees from its member organizations.

Goals
The goals of CELS are to enhance the ability of the life science community to speak with a unified voice regarding undergraduate life science education and to help the professional societies fulfill their responsibility toward undergraduate education. CELS will work to:

• inspire individual professional societies to enhance undergraduate education in the life sciences

• promote collaborations and coherence among professional societies to help improve undergraduate life sciences education

• enjoin the professional societies to enter the dialogue with other national systemic initiatives in undergraduate science education about the critical components of biology to which all students should be introduced during their undergraduate years.