Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Susan Singer, who is part of the National Science Foundation’s Undergraduate Biology Education division, talked about funding opportunities for faculty who want to create pedagogical materials at small undergraduate institutions. She pointed out that the NSF‘s Research Coordination Networks program funds projects that are sited at multiple institutions, including those in undergraduate biology education (“RCN-UBE“). This kind of Read More
A Minor Post, Conferences, Grants & Funding, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching Tools
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Julie Noor’s classroom activity in Drosophila breeding points out a really great “best practice” for any data collection in undergraduate laboratory exercises: if you ask students to first interpret only the data they collected, then allow them to interpret the aggregated data of the whole class, you can allow them to see the importance of sample size. Read More
A Minor Post, Conferences, Evolution Education, Lesson Ideas, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Julie Noor of Duke University shows how a very simple classroom experiment in fly breeding to the F3 generation can force students to answer the following question in the affirmative: “Have you ever seen evolution actually occurring?” It is powerful when students are able to report that they have seen “evolution in action”.
A Minor Post, Conferences, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Jim Costa of the Highlands Biological Station points out that Darwin’s scientific explorations in his own backyard were as profoundly important to his theories as his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle.
A Minor Post, Conferences, Evolution Education, History, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 19 Jun 2014 / 2
After landing at Raleigh-Durham airport today I am ready for Evolution 2014! It has been four years since I last attended the annual meeting that brings together members of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN). I do not always get the chance to attend this conference, so Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 30 Jun 2010 / 0
The verdant base of the Multnomah Falls I really enjoyed Evolution 2010. It was a very well-organized conference that came off without any hitches. Having been involved in the execution of Evolution 2006 at Stony Brook University, I understand how much work goes into making these meetings happen. Portland State University deserves much credit for Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 29 Jun 2010 / 0
Things always tend to thin out towards the end of a conference, but a bunch of us were up bright and early to kick off a special symposium “Moving towards a science of evolutionary prediction”. After some opening words by session organizer Allen Rodrigo, Hamish Spencer led off with a talk entitled “Evolutionary prediction and Read More
Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 28 Jun 2010 / 0
Early in the morning there were no whole sessions that consistently peaked my interest, so I spent my morning bouncing between a variety of talks. Tomas Brodin gave an interesting talk entitled “Can environmental filtering of animal personalities promote speciation?”. Working with frogs that disperse from the mainland to nearby islands outside Umea, Sweden, Brodin Read More
Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 27 Jun 2010 / 0
I began the second full day of talks at Evolution 2010 presiding over the only education session in the entire meeting, a session which also included my talk for the meeting. It is a bit surprising that our session, which was forced to start at 8 am on a Sunday, was the only one dedicated Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 26 Jun 2010 / 0
I spent the morning of the first full day of Evolution 2010 in a variety of talks, most of which were themed on sociality. Surprisingly, a great number of these talks tackled the difficult and controversial topic of group selection. I think that it is becoming increasingly clear that it is not as easy to Read More
Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution
