I am a scientist. In retrospect, it is therefore surprising to me that I and my many colleagues in colleges and universities have focused almost exclusively thus far on what we teach in our science classes, instead of focusing on what our students are learning. Honesty is one of the central values of our science culture. It is therefore past time to be honest about the results of our present way of teaching science. Speaking generally, we have failed to communicate either the excitement or the nature of science to most of our undergraduates. This failure applies not only to the many non-majors who take science as a distribution requirement, but to far too many of our science majors as well.

To me, one of the most profound messages of the "Reinvention" report is its emphasis on providing a qualitatively different educational experience for every college student in their freshman year. Science provides an ideal venue for exposing students immediately to inquiry learning, and there is no better place than a research university for doing so. Research universities often make work in a research laboratory available as an option to their upper level science majors. As a professor at Princeton University for 10 years, I accommodated 4 juniors and 4 seniors in my laboratory every year. Almost invariably, whether or not their projects were successful by the faculty's account, the undergraduates in our biochemical sciences department ranked the research that they carried out for their senior thesis as the highlight of their undergraduate careers.

The challenge to us all is to find a way to bring a similar, if less intense encounter with the real world of scholarship to every student, and at the same time to provide this experience much earlier - with the hope that it will profoundly affect their attitude to education and thus their subsequent undergraduate careers.

There are two major obstacles to creating such a profound change in our approach to science in the early college years. The first is the challenge of getting to scale. The scale problem is dealt with today by offering first-year science courses in an auditorium, with hundreds of students being taught in a large group. By lecturing for just three hours, a professor can generate more than 1000 "student contact hours" a week. However, in my experience, it takes six hours or so to prepare well for an hour of lecture, even if a course has been given before. So the hard question to ask our faculty should be: how else might you use 20 hours a week that is much more meaningful, both for you and for your students?

If a collection of modern technologies are used to replace the dissemination of knowledge in traditional lectures, the 20 hours could be spent in ways that take advantage of a scientist's well-developed skills as a coach of guided inquiry, eliminating most of the unproductive preparation time. For example, anyone who has taught recognizes the self-learning that occurs when one is forced to explain something to a student. There is therefore a great deal to be said about the benefits to all concerned from a educational system in which a faculty member skillfully guides outstanding undergraduates to help teach to their younger colleagues the material that they mastered one or two years earlier. Some inspirational examples have been provided on this Web site as proof of what is possible in this regard.

The second major obstacle is a lack of will among today's science faculty. Everyone I know in academia seems to be overworked these days - too many committees, too many grant applications, too many emails, too many science majors and graduate students in need of advice and help. Why should improving what all undergraduates understand about science have a high priority on their already overbooked agendas?

Fear is the most powerful motivator for most human beings. Speaking personally, I have a real fear that the rationality of modern societies will be jeopardized without a major new effort by the scientific community to teach science in a different way. We all need to think much more deeply about what we are trying to accomplish in our first-year biology, chemistry, physics, and earth sciences classes for undergraduates. When we teach, how many of us have the primary aim of giving such students enough exposure to scientific reasoning and scientific culture to enable them to appreciate science as a very special, evidence-based way of knowing about the natural world? And yet, without this appreciation, we have no right to expect that our democracy can continue to prosper in a world that is becoming evermore complicated due to the accelerating advances in science and technology. If nothing else, we all should have all received a wake-up call from last year's decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to challenge the idea that the Earth is more than 10,000 years old. If we allow the public to accept the Board's contention that the methods that science has developed to discover that the Earth is in fact billions of years old have no special validity, then why should they believe that smoking is dangerous for their health, that the water they drink is safe, or that a massive, atmospheric CO2 accumulation from fossil fuels poses a real potential danger?

It is science, through its discoveries of the regularities of the natural world, that allows us to reliably predict the future consequences of current actions. In my opinion, it is giving all students confidence in this assertion, and a deep understanding of why it is true, that should become the central focus of every introductory science course that is taught to undergraduates.

Northwestern University: The Freshman Seminar Program, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Northwestern's freshman seminar program brings students at an early stage into contact with "the real world of scholarship." All freshmen in arts and sciences are required to take two freshman seminars, which are discussion-oriented courses limited to 15 students. This requirement assures that freshmen will have at least two small courses that introduce them to the intellectual life of the university and help them develop the skills of good scholarship -- critical reading, logical thinking, and effective writing and oral argumentation. Seminars are offered by every department and by several interdisciplinary programs. They focus closely on a few typical problems of a field; they are not meant to substitute for systematic introductory courses and do not count toward majors, minors, or distribution requirements.

Most freshmen take their first seminar in the fall quarter (exceptions are students in a few special honors programs). They receive descriptions of fall seminars in the summer and send us their preferences. Nearly all get one of their top five choices. Half of the freshmen are asked to take their second seminar in the winter, the other half in the spring, so we know how many seminars to plan each quarter. We tell students not to be overly concerned if they do not get into the seminar they most prefer, since all seminars have the same principal goals -- to inspire an active intellect and develop skills that will be useful throughout one's studies and career.

Writing is an integral part of the seminar experience, with a minimum of 15-20 pages of expository writing required. Instructors come from many fields and are not expected to be expert teachers of composition. They are, however, expected to advise students on how to improve their writing and to refer them when necessary to the Writing Program for assistance. They are also asked to rate the writing ability of their students. This information is used to determine each student's standing with regard to the College's writing proficiency requirement. Incoming freshmen who seem likely to need intensive instruction in composition are placed into one of several fall-quarter freshman seminars taught by experienced writing instructors.

A new scheme of freshman advising was recently instituted in which the fall-quarter seminar instructor serves as the student's freshman adviser for the entire year. The shared classroom experience in the fall helps to develop rapport between advisers and advisees and sometimes establishes an advising relationship that lasts for the entire four years of undergraduate study.

Approximately 65 seminars are offered in the fall, and about 45 in the winter and spring. Recruiting faculty for the program is a continuing challenge. Department chairs and the Assistant Dean for Freshmen work together each year to line up instructors. Most seminars are taught by tenured and tenure-track faculty and count toward regular teaching loads. Departments with heavy enrollments may be given special funds to enable them to offer freshman seminars, or they may be given new slots with the understanding that they will expand their participation in the seminar program. A small discretionary account for professional purposes is offered to faculty who teach fall-quarter seminars and take on the extra duties of freshman advising.

Descriptions of recent seminars can be found at the Weinberg College web site at http://www.cas.northwestern.edu/ug/courses.html. For further information contact Dr. Lane Fenrich (fenrich@northwestern.edu), Assistant Dean for Freshman and Senior Lecturer in History, or Dr. Robert M. Coen (rcoen@northwestern.edu), Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Economics.

UCLA's General Education Clusters represent an innovative way to provide first-year students with the opportunity to explore some of the principal ideas, concerns, and methods of the humanities, physical sciences, social sciences, and life sciences in an interdisciplinary framework. The Clusters were developed in 1996 in order to address several needs identified by faculty and students: to bring more coherence to the general education program, to strength the basic skills of first-year students, to introduce them to the research and ideas of the faculty, and to provide a small-class experience.

Each Cluster consists of a year-long series of three interdisciplinary courses organized around a broad theme. The first and second courses, taken in the fall and winter quarters respectively, are lecture courses taught by teams of faculty and graduate teaching fellows from different disciplines. The lectures are accompanied by discussion sections or labs, each with no more than 20 students. The third course, taken in the spring quarter, is a small "satellite" seminar which explores a more specialized topic related to the Cluster theme. Students have several satellite seminars from which to choose. Clusters expose students to a wide range of perspectives and teaching practices, which lead, students report, to a marked improvement in their writing and critical thinking skills. Faculty and graduate student instructors indicate that the experience of teaching with colleagues from other disciplines is stimulating and well worth the considerable time involved in course development.

About 900 students (25% of the incoming class) participated in the six Clusters offered in 2000-2001. The Cluster themes are: "Evolution of the Cosmos and Life," "The Global Environment," "The History of Modern Thought," "Interracial Dynamics in American Literature, Culture, and Society," "Perception and Illusion: Cognitive Psychology, Literature, and Art" and "The United States 1963-1974: Politics, Society and Culture." Aided by a grant from the Hewlett Foundation, faculty "affinity groups" are currently working to develop additional Clusters. Topics they are focusing on include: "Understanding Violence," "Computing the Future - The Social Entailments of Computation," and "Africa in the New Millennium: Roots and Prospects."

Additional information including current and past seminar topics and syllabi, as well as the most recent assessment report, is available on the Cluster Course Web site:
http://www.college.ucla.edu/ge/clusters/.

University of Maryland: The Gemstone Learning Community

The Gemstone Program brings together multidisciplinary teams of undergraduate honors students from all majors, from engineering to the arts and humanities. These teams, formed in the freshman year, undertake three-year, student-initiated research projects in which they analyze and propose solutions to societal problems, which generally involve a significant technology focus. Team members work as a coordinated group, investigating their project from the perspective of individual majors, under the guidance of a faculty mentor. In their first two years students are encouraged to live together on a residence hall floor reserved for Gemstone participants.

About 150 first-year students who have been admitted to the University Honors Program participate each year. In addition to the team project, all Gemstone freshmen take a team-taught course on "Technology: An Historical, Sociological and Business Perspective." In their sophomore and junior years, the students research the background of their projects and devise and test potential solutions. As seniors, they prepare a team thesis reporting research results and describing their proposed solution, and present their findings to an evaluation panel of both faculty and external experts. Students who successfully complete the program receive a Gemstone degree citation. They also receive a separate Honors citation if they complete additional requirements.

Team topics vary enormously from, for example next-generation mass transportation, genetic testing, to reclamation of the Chesapeake Bay. Several current senior teams have received outside recognition and awards from professional and disciplinary societies for their work.

Gemstone has proved to be a valuable recruiting tool. More than three quarters of Gemstone students state that admission to the program was the single most important factor in determining their decision to attend the University of Maryland. Gemstone has been particularly successful in recruiting highly qualified women and ethnic minorities. Gemstone students overall have among the highest SAT scores, GPAs, and graduation and retention rates at the University.

While the program was begun in 1996 by the Dean of the School of Engineering and is administered through that School, it currently involves 46 faculty members from all disciplines and units at the University, including professional schools. The majority of students are not Engineering majors. Gemstone students in all disciplines are far more likely than non-Gemstone students to choose double (or even triple) majors.

More information, including links to the home pages of the different teams, is available on the Gemstone Web site: http://gemstone.umd.edu.

Cornell University: Explorations in Biology

The Explorations Program at Cornell University introduces undergraduates in introductory biology to biological research on campus. It connects beginning students to the larger community of scientists by providing them with opportunities to interact directly with a researcher in a small group setting (about eight students) that usually involves some hands-on participation. The program is structured so that each student enrolled in BioG 101-106 is required to participate in one "Exploration" per semester (fall and spring) of an area of biological interest. The year-long BioG 101-106 sequence includes the two introductory biology courses that most prospective biology majors take and serves about 700-900 students (mainly freshman) each year. Approximately 35% of all incoming freshman take these two courses.

The "Explorations" consist of about 100-120 individual faculty-designed "experiences", each of approximately 3-4 hours and usually meeting once during the semester. Most are designed to introduce students to the kinds of research problems the faculty member works on. Programs take place both in research labs on campus and at field sites near campus. The biology faculty who participate come from all major administrative units at Cornell, including the Colleges of Arts and Science, Agriculture and Life Science, Human Ecology, Engineering, and the Veterinary Medicine. Faculty participation is voluntary and seems mainly motivated by the contacts the program provides with bright, beginning students who might be interested in involvement in undergraduate research in their area.

Students register on-line for their Exploration each semester by selecting their 6-8 top choices from among the sessions available. Usually 80-85% of the students get one of their top three choices. Students evaluate their Exploration each semester by completing an on-line form; the faculty receive summaries of these evaluations.

The Exploration Program is designed to be a first step in involving our biology majors in faculty-sponsored research. According to surveys done by Cornell's Office of Undergraduate Biology (OUB), approximately 70% of biology majors at Cornell do original research sometime during their four years. The Exploration program began in 1991 and is funded by the OUB and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

To provide a sense for the diversity of programs provided, the following list includes some representative titles from the 2000-2001 offerings:
Use of Ultrasonography to Study Ovarian Function;
Posture and Locomotion in Horses: Extinct and Extant;
The Immunological Riddle of Pregnancy;
ELECTRIC FISH! Communication and Orientation Using Electroreception; Studying Gene Expression with the Gene Gun;
Ecology and Breeding Biology of Tree Swallows

Additional information is available on the Explorations Web site: http://biog-101-104.bio.cornell.edu/BioG101_104/explorations/explorations.html

Ohio University: The Freshman Experience

Collaborative, comprehensive and connective describe the Freshman Experience (UC 115) course at Ohio University. Collaborative because it is taught by staff and administrators from a variety of departments on the OU campus, as well as a group of graduate students gaining practicum experience in College Student Personnel. Comprehensive because the course attempts to cover a wide spectrum of topics relevant to first quarter students at a large university, including issues of diversity, time and money management, relationships, critical thinking and writing, and strategies for success in college and beyond. Connective because the course provides opportunities for students to connect with a small group of students who have similar concerns and uncertainties and with an instructor who is eager to help with their transition to college. Connective because the course facilitates connections to campus and community resources as well as involvement with campus and community activities and organizations. Connective also because the course provides opportunities for the students to connect more with themselves and their place in the world, exploring interests and values, and major and career possibilities.

The Freshman Experience course at OU is a two-credit course which first-quarter students may take in the fall for a letter grade. Special sections are offered for commuter and transfer students, and two or more sections are reserved for undecided students. The course is also used as an anchor for the theme-directed Residential Learning Communities offered at OU. These communities each consist of twenty students who will live in the same residence area and be enrolled in one or more of the same general education courses along with the UC 115 class. The students thus have the benefit of a built-in support system in one or more of the large lecture classes they take their first quarter.

Additional information is available on the University College Learning Communties Web site:
http://www.ohiou.edu/univcollege/learncomm.htm