Discusses the collaboration of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) with faculty from eight community colleges to develop an innovative curriculum for use in a one-semester general education course in biology that would reflect the recommendations of the current reform movement in science education. Discusses important issues in helping…

Describes efforts aimed at reforming physics courses for first-year engineering and science students at Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey. Discusses the establishment and working of the Physics Learning Center (PLC) and its impact on the retention and performance of students. (JRH)

For more than 40 years, concern has been expressed over the attrition rate of students in Ph.D. programs in American universities. Although there are a number of significant factors at work, attrition of doctoral students in sciences such as anatomy may lead to a dearth of trained teaching anatomists as well as research scientists in the…

The implementation of pre-engineering, standard curricula in K-12 schools is growing at a rapid pace. One such curriculum model, Project Lead the Way, consists of six standardized courses requiring significant training for teachers, specified laboratory equipment, standard topics, exams, etc. Schools implementing Project Lead the Way implement an…

We report on a two-year NSF-funded project to strengthen connections among science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. One component of this project was to produce some initial data on the effectiveness of Interdisciplinary Lively Applications Projects (ILAPs) in teaching science and engineering undergraduates. ILAPs are…

The Atlanta University Center (AUC) comprises five historically black colleges and a centralized library. All are separate institutions, each having its own board of directors, president, infrastructure, students, faculty, staff, and traditions. To encourage coordination of effort and resources, the AUC was formed and the first formal cooperative…

This issue of Carnegie Quarterly focuses on a middle grades life science project in which students work together in groups to explore the properties of DNA. The project, entitled HumBio, was developed to capture young people's interest in science by promoting an understanding of their own biology so they can see how their health and well-being are…

Chemistry in the Community ("ChemCom") is a high-school level chemistry text developed by the American Chemical Society (ACS) designed for the college-bound student. The purpose of this study was to identify students enrolled in a university-level chemistry course designed for the nonscience major who had experienced the ChemCom…

Outlines a unit on mice providing an introduction to mammals and simple classification. Describes student activities, concerning mice, using an inquiry approach and the resource materials a teacher might use in utilizing this unit. This is one of some 40 ASEP units designed to help teachers organize and plan science courses. (BR)

This study is based on a questionnaire survey of teachers trained over a three-year period in a program centered at the University of Wyoming, the Portal School Project (PSP), and a similar survey of a random sample of teachers in Rocky Mountain States neighboring the region served by the PSP. Teachers were asked certain demographic questions and…

Author finds the Australian Science Education Project (ASEP) Unit 3 (Places for People) heavily biased toward confortable middle class living and dealing with only one small segment of contemporary society, namely Australia. Author doubts that Unit 305 will help students to understand much about population pressure in underdeveloped countries.…

Students use aerial photographs in this investigation as they study erosion and deposition along a section of Lake Erie's coast and learn about how groins affect these processes. The teacher's guide presents an overview of the unit, a materials list, suggested instructional approaches, answers to discussion questions, and evaluation items. A…

Presented in this unit are three activities concerning the causes and effects of oil spills and methods used to clean up these spills in the oceans and Great Lakes. Students construct and interpret a graph showing oil pollution sources. The students create and try to clean up a small-scale oil spill in a pan, and they compare the water quality of…