Introduction to the Monograph

Susan R. Singer

This CELS monograph, Professional Societies and the Faculty Scholar: Promoting Scholarship and Learning in the Life Sciences, is both a celebration and a challenge. We celebrate the innovative ways our professional societies are fostering teaching scholarship, and we challenge ourselves to coalesce our endeavors to improve the education of undergraduates in the life sciences.

Our focus here is on individuals working within their professional societies to vitalize biology education. Disciplinary and educational societies can provide the infrastructure and culture for systemic change. This monograph is an invitation to embrace the extraordinary diversity represented by the numerous life science societies and create a common vision for educational reform. CELS aims to catalyze this by facilitating collaborations and coordinating information exchange among professional societies.

The concept for this monograph arose during the 1997 annual meeting of the CELS Steering Committee. Meeting participants affirmed the role of CELS to work through professional societies to nurture the faculty scholar and promote curricular reform as a means of enhancing learning of biology for all undergraduate students. We hope that this monograph will inspire those who provide leadership within their professional societies and faculty who contemplate the continuum of research and education in their role as a faculty scholar.

Below is a road map to the monograph. By sign-posting the sections, we hope to guide readers to the information and challenges that are most relevant to them.

The monograph begins with information on CELS (pp. 11-15). We urge you to consider how this program can help to broaden the impact of educational initiatives within your professional society. We then develop our concept of the faculty scholar and challenge biologists to create communities of scholars with specific recommendations for how this can be accomplished (pp. 16-22). The emphasis is on developing a peer review process for faculty scholarship as a means of educational reform. Numerous examples illustrate concrete steps being made toward a redefinition of the term "professional."

Dr. Susan R. Singer (third from left), associate professor of Biology at Carleton College (Northfield, Minn.), discusses floral development with students (left to right) Catherine Reinke, Doreen Hartzell, and Gita Rao

In the "Showcase" section (pp. 23-45), we celebrate innovative educational efforts focused on both undergraduates and faculty development to facilitate a coordinated approach to the educational efforts of individual societies. This is followed by "Spotlights" on a few individual societies as exemplars of educational reform (pp. 46-54). It was impossible to include all the societies that are making remarkable contributions. Rather, we selected examples of diverse approaches that societies have taken to fostering education as a scholarly activity. The aims of the "Showcase" and "Spotlight" sections are to stimulate further discussion within society governing boards and education committees about new initiatives and to inspire societies with fledgling educational efforts.

Ultimately, individuals facilitate change. Jay Labov and Paul Williams epitomize faculty scholars who have provided tremendous leadership in building a community of scholars and bringing national attention to education in the life sciences. We hope their stories will empower individuals who are exploring the integration of research and teaching (pp. 55-60).

A powerful synergy can result from a convergence of reform efforts in individual societies. The CELS Steering Committee believes that introductory biology courses provide a focal point for common vision among disciplinary societies. After taking a fresh look at the CELS 1992 document, "Issues-Based Framework for Bio 101," we chose to highlight it in this monograph (pp. 61-66). Introductory biology may be the only way that community members, policy makers, and some K-12 teachers will be exposed to learning in areas vital to health, agriculture, and the environment. For life science majors, Bio 101 may be followed by specialization in one of the subdisciplines. Those of us teaching these broadly based courses have expertise within the subfields. We share our curricular innovations within our societies, but we could gain much from more exchange among our societies. The issues-based framework is not prescriptive; rather, it provides a highly malleable structure within which professional societies can contribute curricular and instructional materials.

The culmination of this monograph, "Recommendations for Action," is designed to mobilize faculty members and their professional societies to vigorously promote scholarship and learning in the life sciences (pp. 67-68). These are not bromides, but a call to action. The growing interest in life sciences, reflected in increasing numbers of undergraduate majors nationally, should inspire us to provide students with the best possible learning experiences rather than complacently assuming we are already doing all that we can.

As a former chair of the American Society of Plant Physiologists (ASPP) education committee and a current member of the education committee of the Society for Developmental Biology, I have been thrilled to see educational issues come to the fore in these societies over the past decade. ASPP, for example, started with an educational booth featuring activities and demonstrations for the classroom and teaching lab. Momentum gathered, and the ASPP Education Foundation was created. In March 1998, up to 200 visitors per hour visited the foundation's "Plants for the 21st Century" exhibit at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center!

Working with the CELS monograph committee has heightened my awareness of the myriad of educational activities that professional life science societies are pursuing. It has also served as a constant reminder of how much more we can accomplish if we coordinate our efforts, exchange ideas, and work toward a common vision of teaching as scholarship. The dialogue has begun. Now, it is up to all of us to see that it leads to lasting and meaningful change in the way we view our profession.