PARENT SESSION
Oral Session # 30: Ecology Education II: College.
Presiding: K Klemow
Tuesday, August 5. 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM, SITCC Meeting Room 104.

Four years to develop a scientist: Accelerating an understanding of the process of science in undergraduate biology majors.

Derrickson, Elissa^*,1, ¹ Loyola College, Baltimore, MD

ABSTRACT- For the past several years the Biology Department at Loyola College has been revising the curriculum for our undergraduate majors. One of our goals has been to improve the ways that students learn the process of science. We constructed a sequence of three courses that build skills and use the inquiry method to facilitate student growth as scientists. As students progress through these courses, they acquire increasingly specialized knowledge. We have replaced our introductory labs for first year students with a 3-credit course that introduces students to the process of science. All majors take a second course that emphasizes experimental design, analysis, and scientific writing. Finally, upper level students choose a course in experimental methods within a field in biology. The upper-level course uses student-designed, multi-week experiments to learn the methodology of a particular sub-discipline of biology. I am constructing a methods course in ecology that ran for the first time last fall. I will describe the structure of this course, how this course fits into our overall curriculum, and some of the problems that I experienced. I will also discuss how our experiences might be translated into changes at other institutions.

Key words: inquiry-based learning, curriculum reform, undergraduate education, guided student research