Articles by Roger Johnson

The fiercely competitive atmosphere in introductory courses is said to cause more females than males to drop out of science WASHINGTON--College professors are too eager to weed out students enrolled in introductory science classes, say two sociologists from the University of Colorado, Boulder. And women, disproportionately more than men, appear to fall victim to the rigid practice. Thus, the sociologists say, many women are abandoning their interest in pursuing careers in science not because t

A new chemistry course at the University of Michigan is part of a new wave of undergraduate science courses intended to appeal to a broader mix of students. It emphasizes the active search for solutions instead of asking students to demonstrate a perfunctory knowledge of the "right" answer. The Michigan instructors, Seyhan Ege and Brian Coppola, teach an introductory organic chemistry course called "Structure and Reactivity." They do not grade on a curve, and they do not threaten students with

Two years ago, Joseph Alexander, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University, returned to his Nashville, Tenn., position after a six-month stay in Japan, during which he learned how to apply nonlinear systems theory to models of biological systems. It's a new field, but one in which his hosts at Kyushu University already excel. Today, Alexander's fond memories of his NSF-sponsored visit are still very much alive. Indeed, about his life in the city of Fukuoka, wher