Teaching Fellows: An Innovative Approach to Facilitate the Integration of Research and Education

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Web Link - http://www.cur.org/Publications/AIRE_RAIRE/colby.asp

Teaching Fellows: An Innovative Approach to Facilitate the Integration of Research and Education

Philip J. Nyhus, Dept. of Earth and Environment, Franklin and Marshall College,
formerly NSF-AIRE teaching fellow, Colby College
F. Russell Cole, Chair, Division of Natural Sciences, NSF-AIRE Project Director
David H. Firmage, Clara C. Piper Professor of Environmental Studies
Edward H. Yeterian. Vice President for Academic Affairs, NSF-AIRE Principal Investigator

Colby College
Waterville, ME 04901

Integrating research and education has long been a part of the philosophy of the natural science division at Colby College. In 1998, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Award for the Integration of Research and Education (AIRE) recognized Colby’s experiences strengthening the bonds between research and education. The grant enabled the College to hire five post-doctoral teaching fellows to facilitate the development of new courses and to enhance existing ones. The teaching fellows brought new technologies to the classroom, increased research opportunities for undergraduates, and contributed to the College’s outreach and dissemination efforts. In addition, the teaching fellows had the opportunity to develop their own teaching and research credentials. This experience suggests a model for curriculum development at other primarily undergraduate liberal arts institutions that can enhance the integration of teaching and research opportunities for students while simultaneously preparing future academic leaders.

While the particulars of our experience are specific to Colby, we believe the broader challenges we faced, curricular ideas for addressing the challenges, and lessons learned from this experience are appropriate and applicable to other liberal arts institutions. Just as importantly, this experience may have important lessons for funding priorities at NSF and other organizations trying to encourage the integration of research into the education of undergraduates and nurturing the next generation of college science educators.

The Challenges

Colby recently completed a new science plan that established an ambitious agenda to enhance the “education through research” component of the curriculum. The NSF-AIRE grant was viewed as an opportunity to address several outstanding needs identified by this plan, including the following seven specific challenges.

Supporting course development: Faculty enthusiasm for developing or implementing curricular changes was tempered by the time commitments of a full teaching load, research expectations, and college service. Opportunities for collaboration with other faculty were similarly constrained.

Involving more first and second year students: We wanted introductory students to have the same exposure to research-oriented courses and mentored research opportunities as upper-level students. At the same time, the College wanted to increase the number of all students taking science courses, especially during their first two years on campus. There would be a bottleneck when cohorts of students shifted from taking these courses in later semesters to the early semesters. To meet this challenge, new courses, additional laboratory sections for existing courses, and more effective use of the January program would be necessary.

Reducing introductory class size: Colby maintains a relatively low student-faculty ratio of 10 to 1 and an average class size is 17. A quarter of all classes have fewer than 10 students, and more than 60% have 19 or fewer students. Nevertheless, many introductory science distribution (non-major) and gateway (major) courses were too large to facilitate project-based learning. Lecture and laboratory sizes had to be reduced to enhance opportunities for students to be exposed to project- and inquiry-based teaching.

Introducing new technology: Faculty wanted to bring new technologies to the classroom, but development and training time was limited. Students were getting fewer hands-on opportunities to use cutting-edge technology for research.

Increasing research opportunities: Our intent was to increase the number of research opportunities available to our students. These research opportunities would include project-based activities that were added to existing courses at all levels, increased numbers of independent research projects, increased summer and January program research collaborations with faculty and fellows, and expanded honors research. We also believed that the curricular changes made at the introductory and advanced levels would better prepare our students to participate in independent or collaborative research.

Spreading education through research across campus: The Natural Science Division had a strong history of integrating teaching and research in its courses and independent research opportunities for students. Through the AIRE award we also hoped to build an all-campus research culture and expand the broader philosophy of integrating research and education to other academic divisions.

Disseminating ideas: A challenge that cut across many of the AIRE initiatives was how to disseminate information regarding our successful course initiatives to regional and national audiences. We also wanted to continue a pattern of successful dialogs on campus regarding innovative teaching methods developed through AIRE initiatives.

AIRE Teaching Fellows

To overcome these curricular, faculty, and technological constraints, a significant proportion of Colby’s NSF-AIRE funds were devoted to hiring five 12-month postdoctoral teaching fellows. These teaching fellows were hired for one or two years to work with faculty mentors in Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Geology, and Physics and Astronomy. The fellows were to collaborate with faculty to develop new or revised courses and laboratories and provide faculty with release time. We paired each fellow with mentors of similar research interests and encouraged them to conduct research and mentor undergraduates in independent projects. Because they were awarded 12-month contracts the fellows would be available to collaborate with summer research students. We proposed that the teaching fellows would coordinate and participate in workshops on pedagogy and the use of new technology and assist in disseminating of new ideas and models through presentations and publications. At the same time, the teaching fellows would gain valuable experience in undergraduate teaching and learn how research can be integrated into science education at all levels.

The AIRE teaching fellows differ from typical sabbatical replacement positions or research postdoctoral fellows in several important ways. First, each teaching fellow had one or more faculty mentors to guide the development of their teaching and research program. Second, the teaching fellows were given only limited teaching duties to ensure that they had time for course development. As a result, they did not face the intense pressures of typical leave-replacement faculty, who may have to teach four or five new courses in a year. Many fellows helped to team-teach courses with senior faculty mentors - a situation that rarely occurs with typical replacement teaching positions. Third, the teaching fellows were given both time and limited funds to help them carry out research and engage students in their research. Fellows were given considerable autonomy in developing their research agendas or in collaborating on existing faculty research projects. Finally, working with faculty mentors, fellows were encouraged to develop new courses and to enhance existing ones, to develop training workshops for faculty and staff, and to participate in disseminating the results of these activities.

Figure 1: AIRE Fellow Philip Aaron and one of his research students.

Colby College had little experience hiring postdoctoral teaching fellows - and hiring four at one time was unprecedented (a fifth was hired in the last year of the grant). We know of only a relative handful of primarily undergraduate institutions that have hired teaching fellows. While recent PhDs have commonly filled sabbatical-replacement positions and temporary teaching assignments, and postdoctoral research fellows fill the halls of major research universities, hiring postdoctoral fellows to engage in both teaching and research, particularly in the undergraduate setting, has been much less common (Pray 2001).

Teaching Fellows as Activation Energy

Faculty mentors and AIRE fellows alike were enthusiastic but unsure how effectively this program would fulfill the larger campus goals or the individual needs of the students, faculty, and fellows. To illustrate our experiences, we describe below how one of the teaching fellows, the NSF-AIRE Fellow in Environmental Science, worked with his mentors to address a subset of the broader challenges and goals identified by the campus community. But all the teaching fellows were actively engaged in developing and enhancing courses, introducing new technology into the classroom and laboratory, and engaging in cross-campus activities, outreach, and dissemination. A key element to the success of our efforts was that the College was committed to sustaining developments made by the teaching fellows. As a result, we tried to craft initiatives that would be carried forward after the fellows’ time at Colby ended.

Introductory science distribution course: Colby College requires that all students take two science courses, of which one must have a laboratory component. Distribution science courses designed for non-science majors typically have broad topical interest and do not serve as formal prerequisites for other science courses. These courses are not intended to be easier than the traditional introductory courses that are gateways to the major, but their content is perceived as more relevant to non-science majors. We wanted to use the teaching fellows to increase the number of distribution courses with laboratory components available throughout the entire academic year, including the January program, in order to increase opportunities for student engagement in scientific inquiry. These distribution courses are important vehicles for teaching students a broad repertoire of science literacy skills and for fostering independent and critical thinking, good communication, analysis and problem solving, and computer use.

Introductory science gateway courses: Student learning in some introductory gateway courses for science majors had been hampered because of the large enrollments (>50 students) and the range of first-year students’ abilities and preparation. These gateway courses are foundations for the major, and they should ideally introduce students to research, to analytical thinking, problem-solving, inquisitiveness and collaboration. The increased number and availability of distribution courses being taught by the teaching fellows should result in smaller laboratory sections and more discovery-based laboratory exercises in gateway courses. The challenge was to develop methods to enhance introductory courses in ways that would better allow students to become actively involved in generating and testing hypotheses, designing research projects, gathering data, working collaboratively, and presenting results.

In the Department of Biology, for example, the introduction of new distribution courses dropped the number of students enrolling in the Department’s gateway introductory courses from 150 students to 115, in part because more non-majors are opting for the distribution courses rather than taking the gateway courses, where they often feel out of their element. Laboratory sections were reduced from 18 - 20 students to fewer than 16 students. In the following year, the maximum enrollment for the gateway course was further reduced to 50 students per course. Smaller laboratory section meant that students were better able to design their own experiments based on hypothesis testing. There were more opportunities for students to discuss issues in lecture classes and faculty could give students more one-on-one time during office hours.

Figure 2: AIRE Fellow Larkspur Morton reviews botanical material and students.

More effective use of January term: Science students at Colby now have more opportunities to take distribution or advanced, project-based courses during the January term. These courses take advantage of laboratory space and staff resources that are only available at this time in the academic year. For example, the AIRE Fellow in Environmental Science offered a laboratory course for students from three different departments that introduced geographic information systems and remote sensing. Students not only were introduced to new technology, but they used historic aerial photographs and data on land use to carry out independent research projects on changes to the campus and surrounding community.

Advanced and capstone courses and independent research: In addition to the challenge of enhancing introductory and gateway science courses, we needed to offer more research opportunities to advanced science majors. In the physical sciences, efforts were made to introduce sophisticated experiments in junior-level courses to better train students for senior capstone experiences. Across the Science Division, curricular changes were made to enhance the students’ preparation for independent research, especially honors theses. Students would be better prepared to participate in research because of improved training at the introductory and intermediate levels in the curriculum.

One challenge faced by the Department of Biology, one of the most heavily enrolled departments on campus, was to provide a research experience for every major. Some biology majors undertake as many as five research opportunities, while around 15% do not pursue any independent research option. The challenge has been to accommodate more than 200 majors, including roughly 75 seniors, among only 11 biology faculty. One partial solution was to encourage seniors to enroll in innovative, project-oriented capstone courses that offer intensive independent and group research experiences. These courses focus on subjects that span several levels of the biological hierarchy (from molecules to ecosystems) or make interdisciplinary connections. These courses are structured so that a general theme is developed within which each student pursues an independent research project or portion of a group research project. Given the high student/faculty ratio in biology, we believe that these senior capstone courses are an innovative way to insure that each biology major has the opportunity to pursue a significant research experience quite different from traditional advanced courses.

Figure 3: Students carrying out independent work on water quality for a class taught by Philip Nyhus.

Problems in Environmental Science is an example of a capstone course. This course involves students in interdisciplinary research and service learning through detailed analysis of a local environmental problem. Recently, students have been studying watershed and water quality problems in local lakes. At the beginning of the semester, students are divided into teams to focus on chemical analysis, land use, mapping, data acquisition, and development. Acting as consultants, these teams carry out research through the semester that culminate in a major research report and public presentation of their findings. Our state’s Department of Environmental Protection and local lake associations have used the results of these studies to guide management decisions.

Problems in Environmental Science has drawn considerable attention both on and off campus as a model of an inquiry-based course (Firmage and Cole 1999, Nyhus et al. 1999, Nyhus et al. 2001, Nyhus et al. 2002a). Students in the course actively participate in disseminating their results through local public presentations and presentations at the National Undergraduate Research Conference (NCUR) and the Maine Water Conference. As a result, students not only are introduced to the challenges of developing and carrying out real research, but also have exposure to writing and presenting these results in the real world. Two students shared first prize among all poster presentations at the 2001 Maine Water Conference, and Colby students were prize winners again in 2002. The Environmental Science teaching fellow played a central role in the development of new laboratory methods and materials to enhance the Geographic Information System (GIS) component of the course.

The AIRE teaching fellows also worked extensively with summer research students, independent research students, and honors students. For example, the Environmental Science teaching fellow advised a year-long study by a senior Biology major exploring the role of tiger habitat corridors in central Sumatra that became one of the Department’s first two honors theses. One student worked during the summer with this Fellow to develop new inquiry-based laboratory materials and methods using the new GIS teaching and research laboratory.

Cross campus initiatives - Undergraduate Research Symposium: Many departments and programs across campus have a tradition of providing opportunities for research students to present the results of their research. We initiated an all-campus research symposium to encourage broader participation in these events and to further the College goal to engage as many students as possible in significant research projects that lead to presentation of results before their peers, at professional meetings, and in refereed publications (Nyhus et al. 2002b). The intent was not to supersede the existing student presentation opportunities, but to strengthen them by providing a larger forum for students to share their research experiences, to provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary research presentations, and to draw external attention to Colby’s undergraduate research opportunities. Ultimately, it was hoped that this would help promote a culture of research across campus.

Figure 4: Student research presentation at the research symposium started with the help an AIRE fellow.

In the inaugural symposium, 53 students from nine departments and programs gave oral or poster presentations. In 2002, more than 300 students from 22 departments and programs participated. The teaching fellow had a central role in developing the materials needed to organize and publicize the event. With the success of the first three years, it is expected that this event will become a vibrant part of the research tradition here at Colby.

Teaching fellows and new technology: One method to enhance student research opportunities is to introduce new technologies into the classroom. It was hoped the AIRE award would contribute to building our technological capacity and expose students to state-of-the-art technology. A common hurdle to acquiring and implementing these new technologies is the time faculty must commit to learn to use and apply new tools and software, and to develop the laboratory modules to effectively apply these new tools. For example, Geographic Information System (GIS) skills and activities were limited among faculty, despite considerable enthusiasm. Dedicated hardware and industry-standard GIS software was not widely available on campus. To implement an effective GIS modernization program would require a considerable time commitment with little guarantee that there would be a positive payoff. The Environmental Science teaching fellow was given a lead role in a campaign to address these limitations.

The first step was to develop a plan to integrate GIS into teaching and research. The fellow spent the first year reviewing the campus’ existing GIS capacity and needs and investigating different GIS software systems. Following this review, a small GIS laboratory was established with one computer and software purchased on the recommendation of the fellow. The second step was to build Colby’s GIS capacity by combining on- and off-campus resources. The College contributed computer hardware, dedicated space, software and support, and funds for student research assistants. The AIRE award provided fellow salary and support. This enabled the school to leverage these resources toward several major software, hardware, and data acquisition grants. By the end of the AIRE award, Colby had set up a student teaching and research GIS laboratory containing high-end computers and some of the most advanced GIS software available on the market.

The third step was to use this new technology to better integrate education and research efforts. The GIS component of the senior capstone research course was significantly upgraded and students used the GIS laboratory for independent research projects. The Fellow in Environmental Science also developed the school’s first introductory GIS course and organized an intensive GIS workshop for faculty.

Workshops: The AIRE Fellow in Environmental Science offered a workshop to introduce the new GIS software to interested faculty, to share ideas on how this software could be used to strengthen research experiences in existing courses, and to develop faculty capacity to use this software. The workshop provided participants with a practical and hands-on introduction to the principles of geographic information systems. In addition, participants learned what equipment and software is needed to start a GIS project, how and where to acquire GIS data, how to use and apply GIS software, and the participants completed several small GIS projects.

These workshops helped to focus attention across campus on ways to encourage integration of research and education. Similarly they introduced the AIRE Fellows to the experiences of established faculty with many years of experience in developing innovative teaching activities.

Dissemination: As AIRE grant recipients, faculty were eager to share the successes of the program and disseminate it to the community and beyond. Faculty and AIRE Fellows presented the results of their efforts at national and regional meetings, including the Sigma Xi national forum, American Chemical Society regional and national meetings, a National Council for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) national meeting, a Council for Undergraduate Research (CUR) national meeting, Maine Water Conference meetings, an ESRI International User Conference, and others. To date, more than 25 papers have been presented related to the development of new strategies to increase student research. A web site was established [ http://www.colby.edu/NSF_AIRE/ ] to summarize and distribute information on the progress of this grant. In addition to the benefits gained by the school and other institutions that might learn from these activities, there was considerable benefit to the AIRE Fellows through participating in these efforts side-by-side with faculty mentors.

Specific Outcomes

The AIRE award has had numerous and diverse short-term and long-term impacts on Colby College. In addition to the broad curricular, programmatic, and interdisciplinary impacts described above, several immediate and visible impacts have already been felt. Prior to the AIRE grant, no distribution courses with laboratories were offered during the January term. Now, several courses are offered or being developed. This provides flexibility for student scheduling and it has reduced demand for distribution or gateway courses taught in the regular semesters. Because virtually all gateway and distribution laboratory courses in the natural sciences have been affected, this change impacts all first year students (roughly 485 students).

Introductory science courses with laboratories were capped below 50 students starting in the 2001-02 academic year. Students fulfilling their required science courses will benefit from smaller lecture and laboratory sizes. The initial reaction by students to smaller class sizes has been very positive. Students say they do not feel lost in the crowd and it is easier to get to know their professors. Instructors report that it is much easier to know their students as individuals and to help them. They report that these smaller and more focused courses allow them to cover more specific material in greater depth than the larger lecture format allowed.

Advanced project-based courses also have been significantly impacted. Approximately 40% of senior biology majors, for example, enroll in the Problems in Environmental Science, Applied Environmental Microbiology, Advanced Neurobiology, and Bioinformatics courses. The AIRE teaching fellows and AIRE funds for faculty development played a significant role in enhancing these courses. We have added extensive project-based components to at least five other advanced biology courses covering an additional 80 to 100 students.

Sustainability of the curricular changes was insured in one way by developing course enhancements in modular format so that they could be incorporated into existing courses. These enhancements are not dependent on the existence of specific courses, but rather are adaptable to courses already in the curriculum. Another way that sustainability was insured was to develop non-majors courses that better met the educational objectives of the department. As a result, while the total number of courses may remain the same, the specific new mix of courses, with some new ones replacing specific sections of older ones (or even entire older courses), was more effective at serving the students.

The AIRE award has also impacted the larger campus planning process. Colby’s latest strategic plan for the next decade and lists a stronger and more definite commitment to project-based learning and to service learning as one overarching principle guiding the College’s curricular initiatives.

GIS technology is becoming a programmatic focal point for a new building. This expanded emphasis builds on the interdisciplinary connections developed under AIRE. We have also developed successful interdisciplinary teaching and research collaborations around other sophisticated equipment including a DNA sequencer, Mass Spectrophotometer, NMR, and a flow cytometer.

Lessons Learned from the AIRE Experience

The AIRE award had an immediate - and significant - impact on campus-wide efforts to enhance research opportunities for both majors and non-majors, and the postdoctoral teaching fellows were a vital ingredient in many of these efforts. In evaluating the impact of this award, it became clear that the teaching fellows helped to provide the activation energy to move forward many of the proposed initiatives. Each fellow had a unique experience, but cumulatively this experiment became a win-win-win situation for the students, faculty, and the fellows. In addition to their immediate impact on campus, many of the curricular initiatives they were involved with, the new technologies they brought to campus, and efforts such as the undergraduate research symposium will remain well after they depart and the grant is completed. This sustainability of innovation is one of the important benefits of these efforts.

This model appears to have considerable potential for addressing similar problems and constraints on other undergraduate campuses. From our four-year experiment using postdoctoral teaching fellows to enhance opportunities for integrating research and education across campus, several general and specific lessons might be instructive for others attempting to implement a similar program or contemplating initiating similar hires.

Strategic planning pays off. This award represents the culmination of several detailed, long-term strategic planning efforts. By identifying specific long-range educational objectives and some of the specific constraints to overcome to achieve these objectives, the College was able to use the award and the teaching fellows in a very targeted manner in a variety of curricular areas.

Strong faculty mentoring was central to the success of the program. Whereas typical postdoctoral sabbatical replacements might be left to fend for themselves, the AIRE teaching fellows generally had strong guidance and support. By co-teaching courses with established faculty, the fellows were given a tremendous opportunity to obtain first-hand experience from recognized educational leaders. The fellows gained experience with developing course handouts, exercises, goals, and many other aspects of course development. In their final evaluations, fellows noted that a close working relationship with their established faculty colleagues was an important element in the overall success of their fellowships. Fellows with more limited oversight or unfocused research interests expressed less satisfaction with their experiences. We believe a strong mentoring relationship helps to ensure that fellows do not slip through the cracks and maximizes the opportunities for synergies and collaborations to emerge.

By hiring fellows with unique skills, the school was able to fill teaching and technology needs already recognized by the campus community. For example, by bringing a fellow to campus with GIS experience, the College was able to leverage support for new software and hardware, students were exposed to GIS through independent research projects, students and faculty had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with GIS through an intensive course and workshop, and a new GIS module was developed in a senior capstone research course.

Strong guidance combined with flexibility were important ingredients to the success of the fellows. By providing the teaching fellows with time for both teaching and research, they were able to develop their own research programs, gain experience writing and successfully competing for grants, write manuscripts, and gain experience modifying and creating courses. The fellows reported that these experiences helped to strengthen their ability to compete successfully for tenure-track positions. Already, three fellows have been offered tenure-track positions at liberal arts colleges and they have found the AIRE experience had a positive impact in the application process. The two remaining fellows were successful in their pursuit of research positions.

The fellow-to-fellow dynamic was an integral part of the process. Having multiple fellows on campus at one time offered opportunities for mutual interaction and cooperation. For example, all fellows helped to develop and participate in fellow-led workshops, the all-college undergraduate research symposium, and off campus presentations. The high profile generated by multiple postdoctoral fellows arriving on campus at one time encouraged awareness of project-based learning and our philosophy of education through research. Although the fellows participated in some joint activities, individual fellows were somewhat isolated in their respective departments for much of their time on campus. Several fellows commented that they would have enjoyed more opportunities for meetings among fellows and mentors to discuss new ideas and issues unique to their experiences.

The fellows suggested that it was helpful that expectations about their activities and outputs, such as workshops and new courses, were made clear very early in the process. On the other hand, they appreciated opportunities to develop new ideas and initiatives that they generated independently.

It was also beneficial to identify the fellows with a department or program and to treat them as faculty colleagues. Experiences from other schools attempting similar programs suggest that a lone postdoctoral fellow faces hurdles in being accepted or acknowledged because of his or her uncertain status, or the absence of mentors to guide them (Pray 2001). We did not have these problems.

Matching the research interests of the mentors and fellows provided important research momentum. Providing modest research funds allowed the fellows to initiate new research projects that included undergraduates. While several fellows were able to leverage these funds to acquire additional external research support, our experience suggests that larger start-up and annual research/teaching funds than we allotted may have been beneficial. A competitive salary and benefits package also resulted in a large number of applicants and positive feedback from the fellows.

The fellows can be used effectively to prime the pump on new initiatives. By channeling the fellows’ time into developing new initiatives, such as the undergraduate research symposium or bringing new technologies like GIS into the classroom, other faculty are freed to initiate projects that need significant time to develop, but which require less time to sustain.

Finally, the combination of research and teaching made this program a success. Sabbatical replacement or short-term teaching positions are common at liberal arts schools and serve a useful purpose for recently minted PhDs who are seeking teaching experience. However, by combining teaching and research and strong mentoring experiences, fellows get real training and opportunities to experience and develop innovative teaching strategies and research appropriate to undergraduate institutions. This model will attract candidates who are committed to both teaching and research, and interested in applying new ideas and learning from established faculty.

Although few awards of the magnitude and flexibility of the AIRE award are available to most colleges, many of the lessons we learned from this experience could still be used at other schools to overcome curricular and technological challenges where budgets are more limited. Course relief for individual faculty members might be one mechanism to provide time for curriculum development. Summer stipends might be awarded to faculty on a competitive basis to encourage development of curriculum materials or skill-building laboratory exercises. Sabbatical replacement positions could also be used creatively. The load assigned to the temporary person might include some curriculum development work in place of a course that could be dropped for a year, and such curriculum enhancement could be undertaken in collaboration with existing faculty. This last model would come close to supporting the transformation we experienced with our AIRE teaching fellows. Finally, grant funds could be sought to provide course relief or stipends to encourage curriculum development. Each of these possibilities would help to encourage curricular innovation and to free up time for permanent faculty to develop new skills.

In the final analysis, we found that one important advantage that a teaching fellow provides is the activation energy and concentrated effort that is hard to duplicate with the scattered small blocks of time available to most faculty.

Overall, our experience suggests that teaching fellows, when given adequate guidance, support, and time, can effectively help to address a large number of constraints many colleges are likely to face when trying to develop new curricular initiatives and expand research opportunities for undergraduates in introductory and advanced courses. Fellows can also address specific problems such as a bottleneck in course scheduling and provide released time, added expertise, and intellectual stimulation to strengthen existing faculty and programs.

Lessons for Funding Organizations

We believe that the teaching fellows program helped to build a more extensive culture of faculty/student research collaborations on campus. The AIRE award was a unique funding opportunity that resulted in significant, sustainable benefits for Colby College, for faculty, fellows, and for the students. We would encourage the National Science Foundation or other grant making agencies (e.g., National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute) to consider sponsoring a program to enable primarily undergraduate institutions to hire teaching postdoctoral fellows, preferably in small groups, to facilitate specific curricular and research goals at the host institutions. We believe that this model fits well within NSF’s larger efforts to encourage the integration of research and education by promoting opportunities for new Ph.D.’s to bring new technology and research opportunities to undergraduate institutions while offering valuable training to future college teachers. Such a dedicated program would encourage schools to look for innovative and cross-cutting strategies to overcome curricular, time, and technology constraints while using the activation energy of these hires to develop sustainable curricular, research, and outreach and dissemination initiatives.

The Institution

Colby College is a highly selective, coeducational, undergraduate liberal arts college located in central Maine. It has a student body of 1,800 with approximately equal numbers of women and men, and a student-faculty ratio of 10:1. The curriculum is guided and shaped by the Colby Plan, a set of ten academic precepts adopted by the faculty to express the essential principles of a liberal arts education. Colby has 35 academic departments and programs and offers more than 50 majors and 30 minors. The largest major enrollments are in Biology, Economics, English, Government, International Studies, and Psychology. The College is strong in interdisciplinary as well as in more traditional offerings, with a long-standing emphasis on project-based learning throughout. In 1962, Colby pioneered the January Program of Independent Study, an interterm between the fall and spring semesters. Since that time, project-based learning has become a key feature of the curriculum not only on campus but also in students’ off-campus study and internship activities elsewhere in the United States and abroad. Using the Colby Plan as a touchstone, the College is continuing a tradition of strategic planning under its new president, William Adams, with the central focus on refining and strengthening the academic mission including further integration of research into education.

Colby College recognizes that liberal arts institutions play a critical role in research training, in creating a scientifically literate society, and in sending students on to science careers and graduate programs. As early as the 1960s we recognized the need to better integrate teaching and research into the academic program. Accordingly, we were the first institution to introduce a one-month January semester that encouraged students to pursue scholarly projects. The College’s Plan for the Sciences in the 1990s called for the strengthening of science programs and facilities by acquiring scientific equipment and expanding laboratory space to encourage faculty/student research partnerships. Its theme of ‘education through research’ outlined a new student-centered curriculum designed to engage students in hands-on, discovery-based research at every stage of learning and to emphasize the integral relationship between research and teaching. In support of the new curriculum, Colby’s faculty redesigned many courses and research laboratories to include open-ended approaches that more effectively teach critical thinking, hypothesis testing, experimental design, and collaboration. Recently Colby completed a new science plan, The Plan for the Sciences to Begin the New Millennium that establishes an ambitious agenda to enhance the “education through research” component of the curriculum.

Several concrete outcomes resulted from these strategic plans. An increase of nearly 25% in the number of faculty and support positions in the Science Division has met the needs that arose from a much larger numbers of science majors. A major commitment in 1996 to infrastructure development resulted in a new science library, new science buildings and renovation of two other science buildings. Computing and science equipment has been increased in all departments.

The NSF-AIRE grant was viewed as an opportunity to build on these achievements and to address several outstanding needs identified by our strategic planning. We anticipated that, as a result of these curricular transformations, student would have enhanced independent and critical thinking skills, improved writing and presentation skills, better ability to formulate questions, solve problems, and design and complete projects, stronger analytical, thinking and problem-solving skills, new technical skills, enhanced teamwork skills, a life long interest in inquiry and improved active learning. We also hoped to foster new connections within and beyond the Natural Sciences Division and strengthen the culture of research on campus.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the National Science Foundation for the Award for the Integration of Research and Education. We wish to acknowledge the efforts of each of the AIRE fellows in helping Colby to accomplish the goals set in our grant proposal. The fellows were Drs. Andrew Kortyna (Physics), Philip Nyhus (Environmental Science), Larkspur Morton (Biology), Matthew Swartz (Geology), and Steve Theberge (Chemistry). We also wish to thank the department and program chairs of who helped to frame and carry out the goals of our project: Drs. Robert Bluhm (Physics), James Fleming (Science, Technology, and Society), Robert Gastaldo (Geology), Bradford Mundy (Chemistry), Thomas Tietenberg (Environmental Science), and Herbert Wilson (Biology).

References

Firmage, D.H. and F. R. Cole. 1999. The Challenges of Integrating Service-Learning in the Biology: Environmental Science Curriculum at Colby College. In H. Ward, (Ed.) Acting Locally: Concepts and Methods for Service-Learning in Environmental Studies. AAHE Series on Service-Learning in the Disciplines. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.

Pray, Leslie. Postdoc Life at Liberal Arts Colleges. Science Next Wave. (URL: http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2001/03/15/3 ).

Nyhus, P., D. H. Firmage, and F. R. Cole. 2000. Immersing ourselves: Integrating GIS and inquiry-based learning for regional water quality assessment at Colby College (abstract). Pp. 184-185 In Reshaping Undergraduate Science and Engineering Education: Tools for Better Learning. Proceedings of the 1999 Sigma Xi Annual Forum, November 4-5, 1999, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Research Triangle Park, NC: Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, Inc.

Nyhus, P. J., D.H. Firmage, and F. R. Cole. 2001. Enhancing undergraduate education through research in the environmental science laboratory: GIS and project-based learning at Colby College (abstract). National Council for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) national meeting, Lexington, KY. March 15-17, 2001.

Nyhus, P. J., F. R. Cole, D. H. Firmage, and P. S. Lehmann. 2002a. Enhancing education through research in the environmental science laboratory. Council of Undergraduate Research Quarterly 23: 34-40.

Nyhus, P. J., F. R. Cole. D. H. Firmage, and E.H. Yeterian. 2002b. Enhancing education through research and education using an interdisciplinary undergraduate research symposium. Council of Undergraduate Research Quarterly 23: 16-23.

Publications Related to National Challenges in Science Education

AAAS. 1990. The Liberal Art of Science: Agenda for Action. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Washington, DC.

Advisory Committee to the National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and Human Resources. 1996. Shaping the Future: New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology. A Report on its Review of Undergraduate Education by the Advisory Committee to the National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and Human Resources. National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia.

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