Keck-presentation

I) Who we are (Mike 5 min)

1. Title slide - Computational and Multidisciplinary Curriculum and Research Initiative

2. Key personnel slide - everyone introduces themselves and mentions the classes that they teach - particularly the ones in the project

                  Key Personnel

                 Corinne Deibel (Chemistry)		
                 Michael Deibel (Chemistry)
                 John Iverson (Biology)			
                 Mic Jackson (Mathematics)
                 David Matlack (Biology)			
                 Ron Parker (Geosciences)
                 Charlie Peck (Computer Science)		
                 Meg Streepey (Geosciences)
                 Lori Watson (Chemistry)

3. Presentation Overview slide

               Why Earlham

               Why this Initiative

               Project description

               Why Keck

II) Why Earlham (Charlie 15 min)

• Notes
  • re-read grant RFP
  • re-read grant proposal
  • paul's one pager on the history of student/faculty research at earlham
  • timed run-through
  • plan tour (35 minutes)

• How much time spent with small liberal arts colleges? Answer dictates level of coverage in different parts of what follows.

• Tension between Quaker modesty and our desire to put the best facia on our college and our people.

• Overview of Earlham
  • 1847, Quakers were a large portion of the early settlers to this area
  • Liberal arts with masters in teaching and seminaries
  • Quaker
    • Governance
    • Student/faculty interactions
  • Teaching first and formost (but we do other things too, see Science Division)

• Student Body
  • International
  • Diversity (science in particular)
    • Efforts to improve enrollments in STEM disciplines
  • Selectivity
  • Curriculum
    • Liberal arts, distribution requirements (new language)
    • Science a part of everyone's course of study
      • Actual details of the requirements
      • More below on our majors

• Science Division
  • Faculty cohesiveness and collective strength
    • Multidisciplinary experience
    • Intel Science Fair judges
    • Teaching awards, e.g. John's
  • Science major to PhD strength
    • Numbers for particular departments
    • Overlap w/ major/minors
  • Multidisciplinary applied science groups
    • Hardware interfacing project
    • Cluster computing group
    • Green Science
  • Student/faculty research experience (history, current)
    • Publications and presentations
  • Computational Experience
    • Folding@Home
    • Computational Economics
    • Phylogenetic reconstruction of turtle DNA using Bayesian analysis
    • LittleFe and SC Education
  • Instrumentation and experience with it
    • SEM, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer, Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emissions Spectrometer (measures the concentration of up to 35 metals simultaneously), laser, clusters, weather station, ... Which are most important for this project?
  • Pedagogical creativity experience

• Closing

III) Why Project (Ron 15 min)

• Goals and Objectives
• All that other stuff

IV) What Project (50 min total)

Upper: Geology (Ron 10 min)

• Break

Seminars (Meg 5 min)

Increasingly necessary to explicitly teach students multidisciplinary aspects of science

Also important to provide a strong disciplinary foundation in the sciences

Seminars related to this project are key to being intentional about students' multidisciplinary experience.

Introductory seminars are voluntary, aimed at students with an interest in environmental science. Led by faculty, students who have taken or are taking one of the intro-level courses will present project results. Gives students a necessary intellectual framework for interpreting discipline-specific course research projects.

Advanced seminars are open to upper-level majors only. Will focus on project research in significantly more depth. Overall same goal as the intro course seminar, but more detailed and independent, given advanced intellectual development and knowledge base of upper-level students.

Seminars can be flexible to allow for future project topics; most important that students view a scientific problem through different disciplines, and are given some help in assimilating projects in different courses.

Dissemination/Evaluation (Lori 5 min)

Dissemination activities will include:

• NITLE workshop on integrating multi-disciplinary computational methods into the undergraduate science curriculum. We have already arranged with the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) to offer a workshop for our peers where we will describe what we have done and offer suggestions for how similar programs can be implemented at their institutions.

• Earlham Science Poster Session (held each Fall)

• Student presentation of papers at regional and national scientific conferences (Butler Undergraduate Research Conference, Geological Society of America, American Chemical Society, etc).

• CUR publications and programs

• Student/Faculty papers in science pedagogy journals and basic science journals, as appropriate.

Evaluation will include:

• External evaluation both during and at the conclusion of the grant period

• Qualitative evaluation: open-ended surveys, interviews

• Quantitative evaluation: quantitative surveys, pre and post grant levels of undergraduate research, curricular use of computational modeling and interdisciplinary projects

V) Why Keck (Lori 5 min)

Why Keck:

• Long tradition of supporting curricular innovation: Funding for undergraduate research at small liberal arts colleges is limited. The W.M. Keck Foundation is known and respected throughout the scientific community as a foundation that supports innovative science programs at high-quality libral arts institutions.

• Limited sources of support for such a comprehensive multidisciplinary program: Most sources support only limited interdisciplinary work (bio and chem., for example) and most do not support such work at undergraduate institutions

• NSF funding for science education at 4yr institutions has been flat for past 10 years and curricular improvements funding has decreased by 50% over same timeframe

• Strong supporter of computational science education: the Keck Undergraduate Computational Science Education Consortium headed by Capital University.

• Keck support would also raise the visibility of the sciences regionally and nationally.