Keck-presentation

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

• 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
    • Enumerate - ESM, Laser, clusters, weather station, ...
  • 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

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.