The National Public Policy Evaluation Center, a subsidiary of the PIE Center, received $180,000 from the National Science Foundation to evaluate a nationwide effort to improve undergraduate science education, with the goal of increasing the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates.
With the recently awarded grant, NPPEC will coordinate a series of evaluation activities that measure the impacts of an ambitious project supported by the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Science Education.
PULSE partners include the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. Last year, the PULSE partnership named 40 fellows from across the country with the goal of transforming how biology is taught to undergraduate students.
By encouraging and rewarding faculty members’ efforts to improve undergraduate life sciences education, universities should see increases in student learning and retention rates, according to NPPEC Director Alexa Lamm.
“We also hope to see an increase in college graduates’ interests in going into science-related agricultural and natural resources careers,” she said. “A major goal of life sciences educators is to prepare students to be more curious and apply that interest in the sciences. We are eager to study the fellows’ progress to gain an understanding of how national change of this type can be initiated, and refine their process for future programming.”
Lamm, an assistant professor in the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, will lead NPPEC’s evaluation to determine how leaders immersed themselves in the program while trying to create national change. NPPEC researchers will travel to colleges and universities around the country to measure the successes and challenges faced by this group.
Upon completion in February 2015, the research will be used beyond the PULSE partners and fellows, who will use the assessment findings and recommendations to initiate conversations with a wider scientific community to use PULSE as an example of how to inspire, motivate and assist science educators across the country.
