SEI Director: Patricia Schulte, George Spiegelman (emeritus)
STLFs: Malin Hansen, Amanda Banet, Bridgette Clarkston, Lisa McDonnell, Laura Weir, Jared Taylor (on leave), Harald Yurk (emeritus), Tamara Kelly (emeritus)
Faculty (instructors teaching targeted courses): K. Smith, G. Spiegelman, G. Bradfield, W. Goodey, R. Turkington, M. O’Connor, E. Hammill, P. Kalas, S. Chowrira, P. Schulte, P. Kalas, J-H Lee, J. Klenz, G. Haughn, D. Altshuler, D. Moerman, C. Berezowsky, A. O’Neill, W. Tetzlaff, S. Ellis, S. Graham, M. Berbee, G. Bole, J. Whitton, D. Srivastava
Faculty (others involved in working groups, committees, or ad-hoc support): G. Bole, C. Pollack, A. O’Neal, K. Nomme, B. Couch
Skylight Affiliate: Gulnur Birol (emeritus)
Students and Postdocs: T. Deane, E. Jeffrey, R. Oh, M. Tseng, N. Wang, P. van Stolk
The Life Sciences program includes courses offered by faculty/staff in three departments: Botany, Microbiology/Immunology, and Zoology. As with many Life Science programs the diversity of subjects within Life Sciences at UBC is very large and enrollment in the programs is large. In addition, a very many students who take Life Science courses are not in Life Science Programs per se. Thus the question of Majors versus non-Majors courses is a continuing dilemma. Funding made available through the CWSEI has come at an opportune time for the Life Sciences departments. A curriculum revision process was underway for the entry level courses and recent hiring of faculty members has provided interest in re-thinking upper level course offerings. We are expecting significant developments over the next several years.
The Life Sciences Program received funding from CWSEI in 2007 and began their SEI efforts in the Fall. The funding was renewed and extended in 2011 with four new STLFs starting in late 2011 and early of 2012. The new funding will allow STLFs to work with all second year core courses in the newly designed and implemented Biology Program at UBC. We are currently implementing interactive activities and peer discussion in second year core courses as well as some first and third year courses. Some examples of these are: clicker questions with peer discussion, worksheets, case studies, learning activities, and invention activities. We have also implemented learning goals and pre-reading assignments in most courses we are working on. In addition, conceptual inventories in information transfer and community and population ecology have been developed and are used to evaluate the effectiveness of various class activities.
