CELS Promotes Biological Literacy

The Coalition for Education in the Life Sciences (CELS) is a national coalition of professional societies dedicated to improving undergraduate biology education. CELS encourages all faculty to participate through their professional societies in this remarkable alliance, whose goal is to draw the life sciences community together to address the critical issues in biology education at our colleges and universities and to improve undergraduate learning in biology for all students. While our faculty colleagues in chemistry, physics, engineering, and mathematics are represented by just a few dominant professional societies, life sciences faculty are represented by scores of societies. Indeed, one of the strengths of the life sciences is the large number and diversity of our professional societies. This diversity serves traditional research endeavors and facilitates rapid research advances. However, the structure does not easily address the many issues inherent in undergraduate education that are common to all biological disciplines. In creating CELS, professional societies bring expertise, resources, and culture that support their members' initiatives to improve teaching and learning. By supporting CELS, the societies are building a broad-based infrastructure that facilitates sharing and highlights models of effective undergraduate reform. For example, the CELS monograph Professional Societies and the Faculty Scholar: Promoting Scholarship and Learning in the Life Sciences showcases successful initiatives in undergraduate biology education. We hope that these models will stimulate additional planning, creativity, and adaptation by professional societies, contributing to an ever-expanding reform effort in science education throughout the nation. The context for CELS arises from the chief roles of professional societies. One role is to nurture the professional and scholarly development of their members. Certainly, societies have a long tradition of excellence in encouraging, recognizing, and rewarding research scholarship. Within the last decade, disciplinary societies have increasingly recognized the importance of developing, encouraging, and nurturing the teaching scholarship of their members. Several societies have already emerged as innovative leaders in helping faculty develop and hone scholarly teaching. A second major role of professional societies is to disseminate knowledge about their discipline to advance humanity and instill harmony with our environment. By doing so, societies remain viable and maintain a stable or growing membership. Many societies foster the realization that research, teaching, and service are not separate endeavors, but part of the same effort to understand and invest in the world around us. Research and service inform education; in turn, education provides the fodder and ideas that drive research. Significantly, education provides for future memberships. Faculty members in the life sciences are educating at least three student populations: future life scientists; nonscientists who will participate in democratic decision-making; and future K-16 teachers, who will foster lifelong attitudes and beliefs about science in their classrooms for new generations of students. The instructors of the introductory biology courses are usually trained in a narrow set of disciplines and do not feel competent to fully integrate research and education into subjects outside their specialties. Hence, introductory courses are generally descriptive and lack the development of skills or interests for their students. To address this acute discrepancy between the introductory course presented as an encyclopedia of facts and the critical need for instilling biological literacy, CELS is bringing its "Issues-Based Framework for Bio 101" into the discourse of curricular enhancement. CELS offers this framework so that the various biology subdisciplines can work together to ensure that a college student's first exposure to biology is a rich, broad, and engaging experience. It provides the scaffolding that fosters excitement for learning, the construction of new knowledge, and the emergence of a new generation of scientifically literate citizens. As professional societies become more involved in defining and promoting the scholarly and professional nature of teaching, educational reform will become durable and widespread. Through the efforts of individual societies and organizations such as CELS that join societies, teaching scholars will be able to establish a vibrant community--similar to the research community--that is dedicated in spirit and reality to excellence and scholarship. As this community develops, all faculty will become more familiar with pedagogical research and acquire teaching expertise that fosters student learning through collaborative, hands-on, inquiry-driven approaches. Consequently, faculty and their professional societies will have a coherent voice in determining the emerging educational issues in undergraduate biology education in the United States. CELS provides an infrastructure for national educational reform efforts that originate in isolated classrooms, institutions, and professional societies. CELS strives to link the life sciences communities and improve undergraduate biology education by helping societies define both individual educational needs and common bridging concepts for introductory biology courses. Certainly, we celebrate the diversity of the life sciences as reflected by our professional societies. Just as certainly, we need to ensure that all learners "see and understand biology" so that all students, especially those who will not pursue our disciplines professionally, are equipped with respect and appreciation for the beauty, simplicity, and complexity of life and its associated sciences. Spencer A. Benson, Ph.D., is an associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also chair of the American Society for Microbiology Undergraduate Education Committee and a CELS Steering Committee member. Louise W. Liao, Ph.D., is program director of CELS. CELS Web site: www.wisc.edu/cels

CELS Promotes Biological Literacy

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