Toward a Coordinated Approach in Undergraduate Education by Professional Societies

An Introduction to the Showcases and Spotlights

Robert A. Bloodgood

A guiding premise of CELS is that professional and scientific societies in the biological sciences have an important role to play in improving biology education at the undergraduate level. In recent years, scientific societies collectively and their member scientists individually have become increasingly active in all areas of science education, including pre-college and undergraduate science education, graduate and career issues, and public literacy.

Dr. Robert A. Bloodgood (right) meets with fellow members of the American Society for Cell Biology’s education committee. Pictured (l to r) are: Dr. A. Malcolm Campbell, Biology Department, Davidson College (Davidson, N.C.); Dr. Mary Lee Ledbetter, Biology Department, College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Md.); and Dr. Bloodgood. Dr. Bloodgood is a professor of Cell Biology at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center and a member of the CELS Steering Committee. He has also served as chair of ASCB’s education committee.

For some societies (the minority, I daresay), science education and scientific research issues form a seamless continuum, and both are fully integrated into scientific meetings and the other activities of the society. This is less true for other societies, in which there exists a continuing and sometimes contentious dialogue on this question:

In addition to pursuing its important goals of disseminating research results (through annual scientific meetings and publication of society-sponsored scientific research journals) and lobbying for federal funding for scientific research, should a society direct scarce resources to science education issues?

In part, I think, this dialogue results from two factors: 1) the uncertainty among many scientists and educators in the biological sciences as to the true relationship of scientific education and scientific research and 2) a confusing message sent by many institutions to their faculty (particularly through their reward systems, such as promotion, tenure, and merit pay increases) as to the relative importance of these two academic roles.

Into this situation comes the Coalition for Education in the Life Sciences (CELS), which has taken on a unique mission of improving undergraduate education in the biological sciences in the United States by working with and through scientific societies. The efforts of some societies have been particularly effective, and this section of the CELS monograph will highlight a number of them.

Through CELS, societies can coordinate their efforts

If scientific societies are already working to improve undergraduate education in the biological sciences, what role exists for CELS? A survey of activities from a wide sampling of these organizations makes this answer clear. Scientific societies do very different things, often operating independently and in isolation. They often fail to evaluate the usefulness of the education initiatives they undertake and to widely disseminate information about the initiatives they have found to be successful. The fear is that scientific societies will be constantly reinventing the wheel as they venture into the arena of scientific education.

An instructive example may be found in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), a well-funded coalition of 12 member societies and five sustaining associate member societies in the biomedical sciences. FASEB represents more than 56,000 scientists and operates from a headquarters campus in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. In the area of national policy for funding science research, FASEB has a central committee and extensive staff for coordinating the activities of its member societies. But FASEB=s role in science education is more limited. Each of the FASEB member societies has an education committee that supports initiatives in science education. FASEB itself, however, has no central education committee (not even a science education staff person) to coordinate the efforts of member societies or to help disseminate information about successful education initiatives of member societies.

Roles for CELS

This is an area where CELS is poised to play a major and much-needed role. CELS can coordinate the efforts of scientific societies to improve undergraduate education in the biological sciences by:

• serving as a clearinghouse for the success stories of scientific societies
• disseminating information about successful models and even conducting workshops for the leadership or general membership of individual societies or groups of societies
• helping to forge alliances among societies to promote the success of education initiatives, an outreach activity that may be beyond the resources of any single society
• playing an important role in devising common assessment procedures for determining the outcomes and effectiveness of education initiatives shared by a number of societies
• organizing scientific societies to speak as a unified voice for the federal funding of science education, just as several coalitions of scientific societies now coordinate their lobbying to obtain federal funding for scientific research.

Working through scientific societies, CELS may even be able to influence the reward system at colleges and universities. Only when college and university faculty members in the sciences are appropriately rewarded (and expect to be rewarded) for working to improve undergraduate science education will we see a shift in the relative effort faculty members devote to research and education, both at their home institutions and within the scientific societies to which they belong.

The following pages provide a representative sampling of some current efforts of scientific societies to influence the quality of undergraduate teaching in the biological sciences. Clearly, scientific societies are already engaged in a wide variety of innovative efforts, both collectively and individually through their members. CELS, as a national coalition of professional societies, has the capacity to coordinate the activities of individual societies, evaluate the effectiveness of current efforts, disseminate information about successful approaches, and engage society leaders and members in a concerted national program to improve undergraduate education in the life sciences.