Keck-presentation

I) Who we are (Mike 5 min)

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

Why Earlham?

• 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

• 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
  • our cohesiveness and collective strength
    • multidisc exp
  • major strength to PhD
    • particular departments
    • overlap w/ major/minors
  • student/faculty research experience (history, current)
  • Computational Experience
    • Folding@Home
    • Computational Economics
    • LittleFe and SC Education
  • Instrumentation and Experience
  • Pedagogical creativity experience

• Closing

III) Why Project (Ron 10 min)

IV) What Project (50 min total)

• Goals and Objectives Mike (5 min), or as part of Why Project
• Courses (Mike 5 min)
  • Intro: Gen Chem (Mike 10 min)
  • Upper: Geology (Ron 10 min)
• Break
• Research: Biology (David 10 min)
• Seminars (Meg 5 min)
• 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.

Wrap-up: Review, questions, tour next (Mike 5 min)