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An Integrated Science Curriculum for First Year Students Lisa Gentile

An Integrated Science Curriculum for First Year Students Lisa Gentile Department of Chemistry, University of Richmond. Acknowledgments UR: Betsy Curtler, Ted Bunn HHMI : Undergraduate Science Education Award.

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An Integrated Science Curriculum for First Year Students Lisa Gentile

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  1. An Integrated Science Curriculum for First Year Students Lisa Gentile Department of Chemistry, University of Richmond

  2. Acknowledgments UR: Betsy Curtler, Ted Bunn HHMI: Undergraduate Science Education Award Back row: Ovidiu Lipan, Krista Stenger, Lisa Gentile, Mike Kerckhove, Doug Szajda, Carol Parish Front row: Mirela Fetea, April Hill, Kathy Hoke, Lester Caudill, Barry Lawson

  3. Integrated Quantitative Science (IQS) http://iqscience.richmond.edu/

  4. PKAL- FIDL: http://www.nimbios.org/ifiles/KeckPKAL_IDL.pdf

  5. How do we best prepare our students to work in an interdisciplinary environment?

  6. When a group of faculty met in 2007 to ask that question UR had strong momentum: • Renovated Science Center housing chemistry, biology, physics • New science faculty positions (including 2 “interdisciplinary” science faculty from UR’s first HHMI grant) • Strong science students • $900,000 Science Education Grant #1 from HHMI • Success in securing external funding from major programs to increase interdisciplinary work

  7. Teach the material from the first course in each of biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science as one, integrated course.Course team-taught by 5 faculty, one from each discipline. Includes a hypothesis-driven, discovery based lab and a workshop. Students then go on to complete a traditional major in any discipline.

  8. Reassigned time to develop/implement/teach the course FallSpring Yr 1 (development): 1 course of 3 2 courses of 2 Yr 2 (first time teaching): 1 course of 2 Teaching (counts as “3”) Yr 3: none Teaching (counts as “2”) Yr 4: none Teaching (counts as “1”)

  9. IQS Learning Goals: • Increased interdisciplinary and disciplinary understanding by students • Increased interdisciplinary understanding by faculty, as seen in the quality of integration in lectures and lab • Increased number of faculty in STEM disciplines equipped to create courses that draw on concepts from multiple disciplines • Increased number of students pursuing cross-disciplinary opportunities at our institution and beyond • Increased use by faculty of connections to other disciplines in their discipline-based courses.

  10. Mandatory disciplinary topics in IQS

  11. Reassigned time to develop/implement/teach the course FallSpring Yr 1 (development): (3) (2) 1 course of 3 2 courses of 2 Yr 2 (first time teaching)(2) (3) 1 course of 2 Teaching (counts as “3”) Yr 3: none Teaching (counts as “2”) Yr 4: none Teaching (counts as “1”)

  12. IQS-1 • THEME: Antibiotic Resistance • Mathematical models of disease spread • Agent-based simulation models to study disease transmission/ antibiotic resistance • Conformational flexibility of antibiotic molecule: computer-aided molecular visualization & simulation /VSEPR, VB, MO, energetic analysis

  13. Semester-long experiment: What types of bacteria are present in marine sponges (Clathria prolifera) that are resistant to antibiotics? • Creation of sponge stem cell primmorphs and their symbiotic bacteria that were treated with multiple antibiotic regimes, isolation of microbial DNA from primmorphs, amplification and cloning of 16S rDNA, sequencing, bioinformatics: automating comparison with Genbank and analysis of bacterial DNA sequences (Java program)- posters tonight IQS-1 THEME: Antibiotic Resistance

  14. IQS-2 • THEME: Signaling • Understanding signaling in the immune system upon activation by an inflammatory response: • macrophages activated by LPS to induce transcription of the gene for inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) & analysis by Western blot and NO assay (Greiss reagents for NO2-) • Use of genetic algorithm techniques to generate potential solutions to the traveling salesperson problem

  15. IQS-2 • THEME: Signaling • Kinetics of drug binding to wild type and multidrug resistant strains of HIV-1 protease: experimental & computational project • MRI (rotational motion). Gyroscopic motion angular velocity, cross product, angular momentum, torque. Resonance, relaxation • Brownian motion: classroom, experimental, and simulation approaches

  16. Lessons learned • Allow the idea to come from the faculty and to allow • us to define what we need to make it work. • Allow ample time for both development and • implementation • Focus on group unity and community building activities • Ultimate faculty development

  17. Challenges • “Full” integration of the material • Team teaching with 5 faculty members from • different disciplines • Small departments- development/early • implementation stages • Computer science • Student selection

  18. Integrated Science (IS) Minor • IQS-1 and 2 (or 1st course in each of the 5 disciplines): 4U • IQS Research Training Seminar: 0.25U • Research 1U • 2 x ID course* 2U • Senior IS seminar 0.5U • Calculus II 1U • *: Currently approved: bio-imaging, math models in biology and medicine, bioinformatics, theoretical/computational chemistry, evolutionary computing, systems biology, structural biology. • Coming soon: epidemiology

  19. IQS Learning Goals: • Increased interdisciplinary and disciplinary understanding by students • Increased interdisciplinary understanding by faculty, as seen in the quality of integration in lectures and lab • Increased number of faculty in STEM disciplines equipped to create courses that draw on concepts from multiple disciplines • Increased number of students pursuing cross-disciplinary opportunities at our institution and beyond • Increased use by faculty of connections to other disciplines in their discipline-based courses.

  20. Outputs • Number of applicants, demographics, number completing course. Year 1: 78, Year 2: 53 (includes physics pre-req) • Number of faculty teaching (& length of time) in IQS. • Lecture, lab, workshop materials for IQS. • Number of students from IQS involved in summer and AY research and • Number of students who continue with Research Training Seminar and IS minor

  21. The first IQS class (2009-2010) vs. the comparison group

  22. Short Term Outcomes • Increased appreciation for the value of ID learning • Increased disciplinary understanding in each of the 5 disciplines among students who take IQS • Increased ID understanding in the faculty as seen by quality/level of integration of disciplines in lectures/labs

  23. Evaluation Questions • How effective was IQS in teaching science to students- both disciplinary-specific and ID topics? • ID: RISC* • Disciplinary-specific: Next courses in major • Students continue in the sciences (courses, majors and careers) *: http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/psychology/faculty/dl/risc

  24. RISC data: IQS students pre-test/ IQS students post-test; all students pre-test/ all students post-test

  25. RISC data: IQS students pre-test/ IQS students post-test; all students pre-test/ all students post-test

  26. Evaluation Questions • How effective was IQS in teaching science to students- both disciplinary-specific and ID topics? • ID: RISC • Disciplinary-specific: Next courses in major • Students continue in the sciences (courses, majors, and careers)

  27. Force Concept Inventory: basic concepts in Newtonian physics Gain = (posttest%-pretest%)/(100-pretest%) 62 intro physics courses, 6542 students (Hake, 1998, Am. J. Phys., 66, 64-74) *: other goals

  28. Evaluation Questions • How effective was IQS in teaching science to students- both disciplinary-specific and ID topics? • ID: RISC • Disciplinary-specific: Next courses in major • Students continue in the sciences (courses, majors, and careers)

  29. Science courses in the first 2 years: the first IQS class (2009-2010) vs. the comparison group

  30. Mean number of courses the 2009-2010 IQS students took vs. the comparison group

  31. The first IQS class (2009-2010) vs. the comparison group

  32. Evaluation Questions • 2. How did teaching IQS change the way in which faculty teach other courses? • New cross-disciplinary courses at the upper level are developed and taught: three new interdisciplinary courses have been designed for the IS minor (systems biology, theoretical/computational chemistry, structural biology) • Examples, exercises, and problems that emphasize interdisciplinary understanding developed for the IQS course are used by faculty in traditional discipline-specific courses.

  33. Evaluation Questions • 3. Are concepts from each discipline integrated in lectures and labs developed for IQS course? • faculty designed and added new integrated projects to the second offering of IQS

  34. Evaluation Questions 4. How effective was the IQS course in training students to problem solve in an ID manner, as seen in their research projects as well as in their future courses?

  35. PKAL- FIDL: http://www.nimbios.org/ifiles/KeckPKAL_IDL.pdf

  36. Acknowledgments UR: Betsy Curtler, Ted Bunn HHMI: Undergraduate Science Education Award Back row: Ovidiu Lipan, Krista Stenger, Lisa Gentile, Mike Kerckhove, Doug Szajda, Carol Parish Front row: Mirela Fetea, April Hill, Kathy Hoke, Lester Caudill, Barry Lawson

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