ASPB EDUCATION FORUM

Reaching Goals Through ASPB Education Outreach

For the ASPB Education Committee, 2007 was a busy and exciting year. Many committee members and volunteers gave of their time and energy to engage students, teachers, families, and scientists. We exhibited at the Family Science Days of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Francisco (Feb. 15–19), the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) meeting in St. Louis (March 29–April 1), ASPB’s annual meeting in Chicago (July 7–11), the Society of Experimental Biology’s “Light and Life” conference in Glasgow, Scotland (July 25–27), and the meeting of the National Association of Biology Teachers in Atlanta (Nov. 28–Dec. 1).

An estimated 5,000+ people visited our booth during the year, with each one receiving handouts, engaging in one-on-one interactions with plant scientists, and most likely participating in hands-on plant activities. Nearly 8,000 bookmarks that graphically present the 12 Principles of Plant Biology were either given out or requested from ASPB headquarters in Rockville, Md.

Already in 2008, Jeffrey Coker (Elon University), Chad Jordan (North Carolina State University), and ASPB President Rob McClung (Dartmouth College) along with other volunteers, staffed our booth at AAAS in Boston. Suzanne Cunningham, Sherry Fulk-Bringman (both from Purdue Agronomy), Paul Williams and his Fast Plants group, ASPB Education Foundation assistant Katie Engen, and I staffed the booth at NSTA, also in Boston, where 20,000 to 30,000 science teachers gathered. I was impressed when Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” came looking for Paul in our booth, wanting to collaborate on yet another plant project.

This summer the booth will travel to the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biology conference in Finland. Mary Williams (Harvey Mudd College) will staff the booth at this meeting. We are considering taking our hands-on, inquiry-based plant science to other venues as well in the future.

The Education Committee is developing evaluations to assess our exhibit booth’s effectiveness. It is easy to count handouts and bookmarks taken or requested, but it is much more difficult to evaluate the long-term effects of the booth. We welcome your feedback on the booth, as well as any offers to become a booth volunteer.

One of our goals this year is to develop new outreach material. Katie Engen has been helping us develop new flyers, and these have been very popular. For example, three coordinated handouts are aimed at helping students take a closer look at plants in their daily lives. The flyers are entitled “Plants in Your Pants—Cotton,” “Plants in Your Pants—Indigo,” and “Genes in Your Jeans.”

We also now offer a list of highly adaptable activities to accompany the three plant science radio shows partially sponsored by the ASPB Education Foundation or ASPB Good Works (The Plant Detective, MicrobeWorld, and A Moment in Science). There is a similar list for using our 12 Principles bookmarks as the basis for 10 different learning activities.

We have begun translating more of our handouts into Spanish. Thanks to Marisabel Oliveros, a student working with MariaElena Zavala (California State University), Los 12 principios de la biología vegetal will debut at Plant Biology 2008 in Mérida, Mexico.

Another ongoing project is to evaluate and update the education outreach resources and live links available through the ASPB website. If you would like copies of our new materials or have questions about any of our resources, please e-mail Katie Engen at katie@aspb.org.

We have been expanding our presence at the ASPB annual meetings. Education Committee member Chad Jordan has done an outstanding job organizing this year’s education booth. Stop by the booth in Mérida to pick up plant science handouts and bookmarks. We will also have a hands-on activity for you and your family. Larry Griffing will be with us to discuss the latest on PlantingScience and how to get involved with this project.

The booth will feature the Annual Booth Competition Award Winners, including “Video Podcasts as a Teaching Tool in Plant Physiology Laboratory Courses,” exhibited by Michael van Oosten, Diana Nucera, Steven Holladay, and Burkhard Schulz of Purdue University. Booth visitors can bring iPods to the booth and record the podcasts to use in the classroom or lab. Debra Burhans (Canisius College) will represent the project “The Dynamic Gene: An Educational Resource,” whose goal is to develop plant bioinformatics educational material for high schoolers and undergraduates. The repository of this material is the Dynamic Gene website (dynamicgene.cshl.edu).

We have prepared an Education and Outreach Minisymposium (Saturday, June 28, 3:00–4:40 pm) for the meeting in Mérida. This event will include an inquiry-based plant genomics course and workshop “Phenotype to Gene and Back Again,” presented by Adán Colón-Carmona (University of Massachusetts–Boston, Department of Biology). Nancy Moreno (Baylor College of Medicine) will offer “Web-Based Biology Teaching Resources,” a description of BioEd Online, Baylor College of Medicine’s award-winning website of biology content, news, and professional development resources appropriate for educators of all levels, including undergraduate instructors. Christopher Cullis (Case Western Reserve University) will present “Lost Crops of Africa—Involving Undergraduates in Their Rediscovery and Development.” And to round out the presentation Burkhard Schulz and his group from Purdue will present key components of their aforementioned video podcast project.

Recently, the Education Committee has been evaluating the following concept: “Whether you are broadening the impact of your research through educational activities or considering how to improve your own teaching, proper evaluation will help you learn when your efforts are effective and when they are not.” To enter our conversation about this topic, please join Erin Dolan (Virginia Tech and Fralin Biotechnology Center) and Nancy Moreno (Baylor College of Medicine) during our Plant Biology 2008 Education workshop “Evaluation, Assessment, and Research in Life Science Education: What, How, and Why?” (Saturday, June 28, 7:30–9:30 pm). Come enjoy dessert, wine, and beer and partake in a lively discussion about designing and implementing science education evaluation and establishing mechanisms for getting funding and publishing results.

The Education Committee has been working with NASA to promote their Engineering Design Challenge for K–12 students. In the Engineering Design Challenge, students design, build, and evaluate their own lunar plant growth chambers. Participants receive basil seeds flown on the space shuttle to test in their own growth chambers. We will provide NASA material for this project through our education booth and a link to NASA’s information from our website.

Some of our members are developing new plant investigations for PlantingScience, and the 2007 Master Plant Science Team (MPST) has been expanded to members sponsored by both the Botanical Society of America and ASPB. “This joint sponsorship represents a new level of partnership among plant organizations, which we hope to see expand as the program grows,” stated Claire Hemingway in PlantingScience Update (November 2007). The members of MPST commit to mentor four or five student teams in the fall and spring PlantingScience sessions. ASPB-sponsored MPST members for 2007–08 include Ed Gilding (University of Minnesota), Kelly Gillespie (University of Illinois), Emily Indriolo (Purdue University), Chika Nwugo (Miami University), and Aurea Siemens (University of Alberta).

The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science is a project sponsored by the American Institute of Biological Sciences in collaboration with other scientific organizations to promote the Year of Science 2009. Next year marks 200 years since Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. Education Committee members are currently organizing activities to promote the Year of Science 2009.

We are always looking for new and innovative teaching and lab techniques, hands-on plant activities for K–12 and undergraduate education, new outreach program opportunities, evaluation and assessment methods, and volunteers to help us with our activities. The possibilities are endless—new technologies are being developed daily, along with new discoveries—but plant and inquiry-based science has lost ground in today’s classroom environment. We are working to reverse this trend.

If you would like to volunteer your time and talents to help on the Education Committee, just e-mail Katie Engen (katie@aspb.edu), Brian Hyps (hyps@aspb.edu), or me (jellis@ presby.edu).

Jane Ellis
Education Committee Chair, ASPB