Population growth has and will continue to put pressure on our water resources. Yet students are only exposed to rudimentary basics that lend themselves to engaging in indoor experimentation (e.g. water phase changes and the water cycle) and fact-based assessments. Consequently, the majority of citizens hold on to inaccurate conceptions of where water exists, how it moves, how it gets used, and how it relates to biodiversity and climate change. These more critical concepts, unfortunately, do not appear in state content standards or assessments.

We are in the process of developing a Calculus for the LIfe Sciences to serve biology majors at our institution. We have begun developing Excel labs and homework assignments in the biological contexts such as the lung, population modeling, and logistic growth. We are intersted in your feedback on these assessments in their draft stages. We also welcome any input about the course. What skills from calculus would help biology majors in their future academic endeavors?

This poster will present the draft assessments and provide space for feedback.

Humans make decisions daily that impact biodiversity, and it is essential that citizens understand the implications of these decisions. Yet, ecological systems are extremely complex, with many details still being discovered. Our challenge is to identify the underlying principles and concepts governing the distribution of organisms, and then communicate these details to students in a way that influences their citizenship decisions as participants in local and global communities. 

What skills and dispositions are needed by the high school graduate so that she or he can use knowledge and tools from environmental science to be effective decision makers and citizens? What are the pathways from elementary school through high school that might help develop this key facet of environmental science literacy? These questions are being addressed in the full richness of cultural relevance across our diverse nation in an NSF-supported project taking place at 4 LTER sites (SGS, KBS, SBC, BES) and a number of other sites in the US.

The Baltimore Partnership for Environmental Science Literacy is a five year research project aimed at improving Baltimore area teacher and student knowledge in the environmental sciences. The Baltimore Partnership is part of the multi-site Culturally Relevant Ecology, Learning Progressions and Environmental Literacy, Math Science Partnership (MSP) project funded by the National Science Foundation. The project focuses on the critical education juncture of students in grades 6-12.

The NSF MSP Culturally Relevant Ecology, Learning Progressions, and Environmental Literacy project focuses on the critical education juncture of middle through high school (grades 6-12).