Educators win national recognition for teaching and mentorship

The National Academies have recognized the efforts of four UW–Madison educators who have taken innovative strides in the teaching and mentorship of undergraduate biology students.

Brian Manske, an assistant faculty associate in the department of zoology and an expert on biology education, has been named one of 42 “Education Fellows in the Life Sciences” nationwide. All 42 fellows completed a national summer program held at UW–Madison last year, which aimed to foster innovative approaches to the teaching of undergraduate biology.

The National Academies also recognized 20 “Education Mentors in the Life Sciences,” who served as organizers, facilitators and speakers during the 2005 summer institute. The co-directors of UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching (WPST) were recognized in this regard. They include plant pathologist Jo Handelsman, the director of WPST, as well as WPST co-directors Sarah Miller Lauffer and Christine Pfund.

“The fact that the National Academies is recognizing the efforts of teachers and mentors is indicative of how much importance they are placing on national higher education,” says Handelsman.

“Being named an Education Fellow is truly an honor,” adds Manske. “However, that was only the beginning for me. Over 1,000 students enter biology on this campus every semester and I want to do my part to ensure they get the best biology education possible.”

The National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology grew out of a recommendation in a 2003 government report that college biology students should be simultaneously trained in disciplines such as mathematics and computer sciences to ensure they keep pace with the high-tech biomedical advances of today. The report also called for faculty development opportunities to help boost the interdisciplinary knowledge of biology professors.

Last year, participants at the weeklong summer institute focused on how to improve large introductory biology courses, discussing issues such as better teaching practices, how to engage non-biology majors and how to increase student participation. Teams from 19 colleges and universities were selected to attend the program, based on their ideas on improving biology education. They collaborated and developed “teachable units,” which laid out a week’s worth of lesson-plans and laboratory exercises on a specific topic, and also pledged to implement at least one of the units into classes they teach this year.

“During the institute, we developed an interactive approach to lecturing in cell biology,” says Manske. “Instead of simply presenting concepts and details to students, they were given data and asked questions so that they could work cooperatively and construct the concepts for themselves.” In particular, Manske and others focused on the promise of “scientific teaching,” or the use of real data and questions to present biology concepts, alongside the implementation of new teaching strategies to reach new students.

“I believe there to be a greater diversity of students studying biology at the undergraduate level than in the past, but I feel the traditional approach to teaching only targets a fraction of those students,” says Manske. “The Summer Institute aims to get educators to address this issue through the use of scientific teaching, which involves teaching with the same rigor as science. This is an important concept if we want to train biologically literate citizens that have the knowledge and tools to make intelligent decisions regarding the use of science and technology in the real world.”