Assessments

Northwestern University Ventures in Biology Education (nuViBe) aims to reshape Northwestern undergraduate bioscience education and prepare students to pursue cutting-edge research, advanced degrees, and professional careers in biological and biomedical sciences.

To advance undergraduate education, the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) at Northwestern provides professional development programs for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in STEM and SBE (social, behavioral, economic) disciplines.

The Gateway Science Workshop (GSW) is a peer-led program designed to improve performance and retention of students in introductory STEM gateway courses at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University.

Michigan State University is instituting reform of the gateway courses in biology, physics, and chemistry with an ultimate goal to design and implementation of a set of coherent gateway courses where students learn how to engage with the core ideas of the discipline in scientifically plausible ways.

Indiana University Bloomington was an early creator of new majors that bring together interdisciplinary faculty using innovative pedagogy for instruction. For example, Human Biology is an intellectually-vibrant inter- and multi-disciplinary major that challenges students to gain a holistic view of humanity.

As a response to the findings of an institutional assessment, Duke university has a three-pronged, overlapping approach to enhancing the success of incoming Duke students who have traditionally struggled the most in the STEM curriculum.

The purpose of the Graduate Research and Teaching Fellows Program at Cornell University is to provide graduate students considering academic positions in higher education with advanced teaching and professional development opportunities to become excellent teachers.

Cornell University is undertaking campus-wide and discipline-specific initiatives to provide graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with practical experience in planning for, stimulating, and assessing undergraduate learning with lunchtime workshops and targeted events on developing assessment skills.

Cornell University is working to restructure the core course sequences for engineering and physics majors. The primary focus of this initiative is to transition from traditional lecture to more deliberate pedagogical approaches to enhance student learning and retention.

Cornell University has initiated institution-wide changes to the core undergraduate biology curriculum to transition from traditional lecture based instruction to incorporation of active learning techniques. The first phase of this five-year transition will focus on four large introductory courses.