College Faculty Toolbox

Next-Gen Bio Learning Network

As part of an NSF Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE) project, a network of biology educators from community colleges  and scientists from Washington state engage in professional learning experiences with the following goals:

• Increase college students’ awareness and learning of biological data literacy skills and quantitative biology research methods in intro biology courses;
• Expand college faculty knowledge of contemporary biology methods and consequently enhance their confidence to teach biological data literacy skills and quantitative biology research methods; and
• Promote faculty and scientists’ awareness and agency to support students to engage with questions including:
  • Who benefits from this research?
  • How does this research get translated to help society?
  • What are the economic drivers affecting the impact of this work?
  • What are the barriers to generating open-access data and publications?
  • What are the benefits?

Participants in the program attend professional learning workshops monthly during the school year via Zoom.

Workshop participants:

• Converse with researchers about their cutting edge next-gen biology research
• Explore a variety of challenges, both scientific and societal, related to next-gen biology
• Spend ~20 hours learning together during the school year
• Have access to network-developed data-science-focused activities designed to engage and inspire college students in remote, hybrid, or in-person settings
• Have opportunities to collaborate on the development of new activities (optional)

We are currently recruiting!

To join, please email Jen Eklund, jen.eklund@isbscience.org, a copy of your CV or a link to your LinkedIn profile. In the body of the email explain briefly why you would like to be part of this project and which courses you teach (if you are faculty) or a brief description of your research (if you are a scientist).

Developed by the network:

• Classroom activities – The network has built a series of activities designed to be implemented in the biology majors series.
• Videos – To meet the needs of students, the network created a short video about systems biology and a short video about math in biology.
• QUBES Hub Group

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2019088 and 2217348. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

From Others:

• Microbiome course  – the network used this course to support our professional learning
• Vision and Change
• BioSkills Framework