PULSE: Implementing Change within and among Life Science Departments

Many efforts are under way to support individual faculty-member development and course revision to achieve the outcomes described in the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Vision and Change: A Call to Action (2011) report. For their contribution, staff from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH-NIGMS) wanted to support systemic institutional change for entire departments. To that end, they formed the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE) to collaboratively focus their resources on catalyzing departmental change at all institutions of higher learning. Shawn Gaillard, PULSE Steering Committee member and program director at NIH-NIGMS, said that it is the partnership of the three agencies working together that makes PULSE distinct. In September, the PULSE Steering Committee selected 40 faculty members with expertise in leading change from 2-year colleges, liberal arts colleges, regional and comprehensive universities, and research universities to serve as fellows for a year-long project. "We decided to name them the Vision and Change Leadership Fellows because we wanted to anchor it to the Vision and Change report," said Judith A. Verbeke, PULSE Steering Committee member and acting director of the NSF Division of Biological Infrastructure. The fellows were charged with leading a national conversation o...
Source: Eye on Education - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news