Workshop aims to help K-12 faculty teach evolution
Sarah Wise was preparing to teach biology to seventh graders in the Colorado city of Broomfield in the summer of 2005 when she made a surprising discovery: the foundation of modern biology, evolution, was not in the plan for the year.
The teacher she was working with had never taught evolution. School administrators warned her against taking on a controversial subject.
At the time, Wise was working on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation’s GK-12 program, which aims to help leading scientific researchers communicate their disciplines to a broad range of audiences, including K-12 students.
But the teacher with whom Wise was working wanted to learn more about evolution. Wise decided to help.
“I wanted to provide her and other teachers with a forum where they could both learn and talk about issues related to evolution education,” Wise recalls.
So she set up a half-day conference to do just that; it was titled “Teaching Evolution: Meeting the Challenge.” Teachers said they wanted to learn more, so the next year’s evolution-education conference was expanded to a full day.
Since then, Wise has earned her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado and now is a science teaching fellow in CU’s Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.
The workshop she launched is still going strong. This year’s workshop—titled “Teaching Evolution: Narrowing the Gaps in Understanding Evolution”—is scheduled for Oct. 9 on the CU campus.
The event is divided into four sessions, each offering a choice of three presentations or workshops by CU faculty members and graduate students. It covers a wide range of topics, including: human drivers of evolution, illuminating the role of evolution in medicine, the history of evolutionary thought and examples from agriculture that answer the question “how does evolution impact my life?”
The workshop will also include a presentation by CU Philosophy Professor Carol Cleland, whose specialty is on the philosophy of science and who will lecture on the difficulty of defining “life.”
Loren Sackett, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology, chairs the department’s evolution-outreach committee. Her research interests include evolution in prairie dogs.
Like Wise, Sackett has won an NSF GK-12 fellowship. Sackett is among the 16 presenters during this year’s workshop.
Invitations to the workshop are extended to Colorado’s high-school biology teachers.
The Oct. 9 workshop is free unless participants seek teacher-enhancement credit. For a $35 fee, attendees will earn 0.5 hours of credit from the Colorado School of Mines. Those seeking credit will be graded.
For more information, contact outreach committee member Sierra Love Stowell at sierra.lovestowell@colorado.edu.
The teacher she was working with had never taught evolution. School administrators warned her against taking on a controversial subject.
At the time, Wise was working on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation’s GK-12 program, which aims to help leading scientific researchers communicate their disciplines to a broad range of audiences, including K-12 students.
But the teacher with whom Wise was working wanted to learn more about evolution. Wise decided to help.
“I wanted to provide her and other teachers with a forum where they could both learn and talk about issues related to evolution education,” Wise recalls.
So she set up a half-day conference to do just that; it was titled “Teaching Evolution: Meeting the Challenge.” Teachers said they wanted to learn more, so the next year’s evolution-education conference was expanded to a full day.
Since then, Wise has earned her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado and now is a science teaching fellow in CU’s Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.
The workshop she launched is still going strong. This year’s workshop—titled “Teaching Evolution: Narrowing the Gaps in Understanding Evolution”—is scheduled for Oct. 9 on the CU campus.
The event is divided into four sessions, each offering a choice of three presentations or workshops by CU faculty members and graduate students. It covers a wide range of topics, including: human drivers of evolution, illuminating the role of evolution in medicine, the history of evolutionary thought and examples from agriculture that answer the question “how does evolution impact my life?”
The workshop will also include a presentation by CU Philosophy Professor Carol Cleland, whose specialty is on the philosophy of science and who will lecture on the difficulty of defining “life.”
Loren Sackett, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology, chairs the department’s evolution-outreach committee. Her research interests include evolution in prairie dogs.
Like Wise, Sackett has won an NSF GK-12 fellowship. Sackett is among the 16 presenters during this year’s workshop.
Invitations to the workshop are extended to Colorado’s high-school biology teachers.
The Oct. 9 workshop is free unless participants seek teacher-enhancement credit. For a $35 fee, attendees will earn 0.5 hours of credit from the Colorado School of Mines. Those seeking credit will be graded.
For more information, contact outreach committee member Sierra Love Stowell at sierra.lovestowell@colorado.edu.
—Clint Talbott