William Hoese, Ph.D. - US grants

California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) will initiate a program of Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB) to provide a multifaceted series of educational experiences for undergraduates, focused on learning through discovery in environmental biology. The program will strive to attract primarily students from underrepresented minority groups to environmental biology early in their academic careers. Over the 4-year project period, as many as 18 students will undertake a diversity of approaches to environmental issues in three distinctly different ecosystems affected by human encroachment in Southern California (desert, foothill, and coastal wetlands). The program's goal is to prepare the UMEB Scholars to develop a realistic career plan and strategies for entering graduate school in environmental biology and/or entering the workforce in environmental industry or governmental agencies. The program will (1) provide opportunities for students to become engaged in hands-on research experience in a broad array of areas within environmental biology, (2) promote the development of mentoring skills by faculty members, (3) foster a collaborative enterprise between student and mentor in engaging in the science of environmental biology, and (4) thus attempt to increase the number of students from underrepresented groups engaging in environmental biology and going on to advanced study and careers in the field.

The UMEB Scholars will be selected during the spring of their freshman year and will participate in an intensive field-based course and complete a supervised research project during that summer. The 4-week course will bring together students, faculty members, and other professional environmental biologists for in-depth study of the effects of human activities in the three targeted ecosystems. Following this, each student will be matched with a faculty mentor based on interests, mentoring needs, and available research opportunities, and will become an integral member of the mentor's research group. At the end of each summer, the UMEB Scholars will present their research findings at a student poster session. As part of their Biology major, the UMEB students will complete classes designed for their needs, including courses in experimental design and research ethics. The cornerstone of the CSUF UMEB Program will be the completion of a two-year independent research project done in collaboration with a faculty mentor, culminating in a senior thesis. Students will present reports on their research progress in a Proseminar designed to strengthen the community of environmental biologists at CSUF and to provide information about research, internship, graduate school, and career opportunities. The entire program will prepare the UMEB Scholars for careers or graduate programs in environmental biology.

The Department of Biological Science at California State University Fullerton (CSUF) is implementing a major curricular revision of the biology major's program in fall 2002. Planning for this revision involved the majority of the 24 faculty in the department working as collaborative teams and was based on explicit identification of student learning outcomes for the entire curriculum and for each of the four new core courses that replace the eight core courses previously offered. Faculty worked in groups called Teaching Collaboratives, according to their expertise, to develop the four new core courses. The new core courses incorporate active learning and inquiry-based activities in both the lecture and laboratory sections. The Faculty Collaboratives are now developing and adapting assessment instruments and techniques (such as those developed at Kean University, Reid, B et al, 1992, "Outcome Assessment as a Context for Evaluating the Biology Curriculum", BioScience, 42:536-542) for critical thinking and problem-solving skills, linked to the major concepts and themes within the courses. Faculty teaching the same core courses (members of the Teaching Collaboratives) are sharing their assessment items and developing new ones with the guidance of assessment software and in collaboration with an assessment consultant and process facilitator. In addition, sample student work resulting from these assessment items are being examined by the Teaching Collaboratives to identify strengths and weaknesses of the assessment items and of the learning environment. The end result is development of: an informed faculty; an electronic system for gathering the data to monitor the impact of curricular changes on student achievement, attitudes, and retention; and an accessible but secure database that allows faculty to share assessment items and to monitor student profiles throughout the biology program.

California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), a minority and Hispanic-serving institution, will conduct an Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB) program revolving around an overall theme of understanding the ecology and environmental biology of changing southern California ecosystems. The multifaceted educational experience for undergraduates will foster greater participation of minority and urban-raised students in environmental biology, increase their opportunities to conduct field research, expose them to the breadth and interdisciplinary nature of environmental biology, introduce them to the diversity of careers available in environmental biology, and develop both student and faculty mentoring skills. Over the 4-year project period, students will research environmental issues in three distinctly different ecosystems affected by human encroachment in southern California (desert, foothill, and coastal wetlands). UMEB scholars will be recruited during the spring of their freshman or sophomore year to participate in an intensive field-based course and complete supervised research projects during that summer. The 4-week course will bring together students, faculty members, and other professional environmental biologists for in-depth study of the effects of human activities in the three targeted ecosystems. Following this, students will be matched with a faculty mentor based on mutual interests, mentoring needs, and available research opportunities, and each will become an integral member of the mentor's research group. Students will develop and complete a two-year independent research project done in collaboration with a faculty mentor, culminating in a senior thesis. Results of their research will also be presented at local, regional and national conferences. Scholars will meet weekly to work on group-oriented activities and career development, and throughout the program, the more experienced scholars will serve as peer mentors to enhance student leadership skills and develop bonds among the UMEB scholars. The program aims to develop an environmental biology-oriented undergraduate community that provides a strong peer-support network, and immerses students into the culture of environmental research while preparing them for careers in environmental biology. For more information, contact Bill Hoese (bhoese@fullerton.edu) or visit http://biology.fullerton.edu/scerp/index.html.

Assessment / Research (91)

Misconceptions and incomplete knowledge interfere with a student's ability to construct a conceptual hierarchy leading to deep learning. This project is developing a series of image-based assessments, rooted in student mental models, to diagnose misconceptions in biology. The goal of this work is to identify common misconceptions or incomplete knowledge within the hierarchy of biological diversity with the objective of developing materials to address and enhance student knowledge in biology. The project, based on models of inferential reasoning and decision-making, consists of three steps. In step 1, students generate and annotate drawings representing their understanding (i.e. mental model) of a specific concept (e.g. cell structure, insect morphology). Student-generated images are analyzed for the presence or absence of essential elements and for the presence of incorrect information. Preliminary results reveal that student drawings contain previously unrecognized misconceptions based on incorrect information or unrecognized misconceptions based on incomplete information. The use of images allows for the identification of misconceptions held by a diverse group of students, independent of English language skill. Step 2 of the project requires students to categorize a series of images specific to a concept. The images include common, unfamiliar, and textbook examples of the concept. Some images are manipulated to add, remove or displace essential features. Student performance on this task is providing insight to the cues used in making inferences. The final step of the project involves the integration of the previous results to arrive at a common set of misconceptions for use in the construction of tutorial assessment that can be implemented as a diagnostic and educational tool in lower division biology courses. The unique quality of the tutorial assessment is that, in addition to providing diagnostic information to instructors, it functions to make students aware of their own misconceptions independent of their language proficiency; an important feature for the retention of under-represented groups in STEM.
Intellectual Merit: The proposed project is examining student misconceptions as the product of errors in inferential reasoning with the goal of identifying the missing or erroneous cues that underlie common misconceptions in biology. The use of images to accomplish this goal provides a novel approach to the problem.
Broader Impact: The development of an image-based assessment for the identification of common misconceptions in biology can impact the quality of biology instruction, especially for under-represented and non-native English speaking students, at a national level. The format of this assessment could be used as a model for similar studies in other sub-disciplines in biology or in other STEM disciplines.

An award has been made to California State University Fullerton (CSUF) to establish an Undergraduate Research and Mentoring (URM) program. The program will provide two-year research experiences in environmental biology and ecology to five cohorts of scholars (five students per cohort) starting in spring 2011 and continuing through winter 2015. Each cohort will comprise five students who will be trained on research involving problems related to the sustainability of native ecosystems. CSUF-URM scholars will study these ecosystems and develop high-quality research skills that apply critical thinking beyond what is typically achieved in an undergraduate classroom. By the end of their tenure in the program, scholars will be well positioned for admission into highly competitive graduate programs in the environmental and ecological disciplines. The CSUF-URM program will include three main components: (1) a summer field course; (2) two years of independent research, mentored directly by faculty, and culminating in a senior thesis; and (3) enhancement activities to foster cohort-building and networking, peer mentoring, communication skills building, ethics training, and career development. Scholars will be selected based on their interests, career goals, and ability for productive research as determined by past experiences, academic performance, and letters of recommendation. Scholars will investigate a diversity of projects built around the expertise of the faculty mentors, including (1) the effects of disturbance on communities and behavior, (2) the physiological and ecological impacts of non-native species, (3) the response of species to current and future climate conditions, (4) conservation methods for native species, and (5) baseline ecological conditions in vulnerable habitats. Research performed by scholars will be presented at national conferences, and form the basis of an undergraduate research thesis. All CSUF-URM scholars will develop research skills that will (1) contribute directly to the greater knowledge of our changing Earth, (2) increase visibility and awareness of environmental sciences across the many cultural divisions of Southern California, and (3) increase individual competitiveness for admission to graduate school. Evaluation of program success is planned through monitoring of student accomplishments and outcomes. More information is available at http://biology.fullerton.edu/scerp/index.html, or by contacting William Hoese (bhoese@fullerton.edu) or Darren Sandquist (dsandquist@fullerton.edu).