Monograph explores the role of scholarship and teaching

The Coalition for Education in the Life Sciences (CELS), a UW–Madison-based national alliance of professional biology societies, is taking aim at undergraduate biology education.

Last month, CELS released an 87-page monograph that seeks to bring into sharp focus critical issues of undergraduate biology education and map a course for attacking those problems at colleges and universities nationwide.

“CELS was created to unite the biology community in addressing deficiencies in life sciences education,” according to CELS Program Director Louise Liao. Unlike the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering, fields where one or two professional societies dominate the scholarly landscape, the life sciences are represented by more than 100 national professional societies.

The idea behind CELS, Liao said, is to enlist — through professional societies — the larger community of biologists in an effort to revitalize college biology education in the United States. CELS is based in UW–Madison’s Center for Biology Education.

The monograph, said Liao, has four primary themes:

• To highlight the contributions of professional societies to undergraduate education.
• To identify critical components of biology literacy for all undergraduate students.
• To recommend ways to improve undergraduate biology education.
• To promote teaching as a scholarly and professional activity.

The CELS web site also has information on how to order bound copies of the monograph.