the-aps.org>committees >education committee

2006 Education Committee Report

The activities of the Education Committee are coordinated and closely intertwined with the activities of the APS Education Office. This report provides summaries of Education Commit-tee activities.

Web-based Professional Skills Courses

With support from the NIGMS Minority Opportuni-ties in Research (MORE) division, the APS is developing live, web, and CD-ROM short courses that focus on critical professional skills areas. Each course will include a strong focus on the interaction of racial/ethnic background and culture with the development of these skills. Students who complete the course(s) will:

• improve their performance in specific professional skills areas;

• increase their understanding of how these skills can impact career opportunities and advancement in biomedicine;

• increase their understanding of how diversity issues, especially cultural influences and background experiences, can interact with the development of professional skills targeted by the course; and

• increase their knowledge of resources and materials that can further assist in their development of these key professional skills.

Although direct oversight of the project resides with the Education Committee, the Careers in Physiology, Porter Physiology Development, Trainee Advisory, and Women in Physiology Committees are actively involved in the project, particularly through the project’s Advisory Board.

In 2006, the Education Office developed materials for a live short course focused on writing and reviewing for journals. The materials’ development was facilitated by contributions from previous Women in Physiology Committee EB workshops and from individual members. Two live short courses were held in 2006 to field test the materials. Numerous APS members volunteered to be speakers and small group leaders and to provide feedback on the draft materials. Several of the small group leaders asked to serve at the second course and in future courses. The short courses also included participants and group leaders from other biomedical research societies (American Society for Microbiology, Society for Neuroscience, and Society for Developmental Biology). Initial feedback from participants and group leaders at both live short courses indicate that they were highly successful.

In 2006-2007 this project will:

• develop the live short course materials into an interactive, online course, as well as prepare the live short course materials for easy download and course replication;

• work to develop the APS’ IT capability to allow APS to house these interactive courses in-house rather than at a third party site; and

• prepare materials for the second live short course (January 2007), focused on presentation skills.

EB Refresher Course

The 2006 Refresher Course, “Gender Differences in Physiology,” was organized by Education Committee member Martha Blair. The session was well attended with more than 260 attendees. Participant ratings were very positive, especially for Dr. Wierman’s overview of sex steroid effects on target tissues. In 2007, the EB Refresher Course will restart the cycle of major topics, with gastrointestinal physiology as the focus. This topic was the subject of the 1996 Refresher Course. P.K. Rangachari has volunteered to coordinate the session.

Resource Web Site for Medical Physiology Course Directors

This joint project of the APS and ACDP has created an online resource site for medical physiology course directors. Resources include information on faculty evaluation, course evaluation, curriculum issues and instructional options. The second annual meeting of interested course directors was held at EB 2006. The purpose of the meeting was to update course directors on the resources already available at the website and to request materials to further populate the site. Fifteen course directors were in attendance at the meeting. The Committee will continue to gather additional resources for the website in the coming year and, at the request of the course directors, will continue to schedule informal meetings at EB.

APS Archive of Teaching Resources

The Archive continues to grow in both size and diversity of resources. In 2005, the APS—-along with its BioSciEd Net (BEN) partners—-received a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the BEN Collaborative as the official Pathways to Biological Sciences Resources online portal. This distinguishes the BEN portal from other biology-related digital libraries and provides a much higher profile for the APS Archive. The funding will allow the BEN partners, over the next four years, to increase both the number of cataloged resources (from 3,700 to 27,000) and number of collaborating organizations from 13 to 22. This includes the addition of notable partners such as the American Society for Cell Biology, the Dolan DNA Learning Center, and American Institute for Biological Sciences. The APS Archive will gain two new partners who will contribute materials to our digital library: Society for Developmental Biology and National Association of Health & Science Education Partnerships (NAHSEP). NAHSEP members primarily represent NIH Science Education Partnership Awardees (SEPA) and develop extensive materials for K-12 science education related to biomedicine. Finally, the NSF Pathways funding will allow us to establish a cadre of trained faculty representatives at numerous undergraduate campuses around the country; these representatives will conduct professional development for regional colleagues on the use of digital resources to enhance teaching and learning.

Medical Physiology Learning Objectives Project

The Medical Physiology Learning Objectives were published in 2000 with a planned periodic review by each APS section to update the objectives on a regular basis.  The ACDP will continue to periodically revise sections to insure that they remain current.

David Bruce Awards

The Education Committee completed its third round of David S. Bruce Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. A total of 29 applications were received for the 2006 awards. The Committee selected 12 finalists based on the abstract and a one-page letter submitted by the undergraduate students. The 12 finalists each made oral presentations with their posters to the judging team during the EB 2006 meeting. From that group, four awardees were selected. Robert Carroll, Chair of the Education Committee, and APS President Doug Eaton presented certificates to the eight finalists and certificates and $500 checks to the four awardees during an award presentation held during the APS Undergraduate Research Poster session.

EB 2006 Undergraduate Poster Session

All undergraduate students who were presenting posters as first authors were contacted and invited to present their posters at a special APS Undergraduate Poster Session held on Sunday afternoon. This time slot was selected because many of the undergraduates are not able to stay for the entire EB meeting and often have to leave Sunday evening to return to classes. Of the 114 undergraduates invited to present at this special session, 97 (85%) responded positively. Almost 125 students put their posters up at the session held in the Convention Center. Each student was given one of the new APS pins for student researchers. Approximately 200 APS members came to see the posters and talk with the students. For the first time, physiology departments were invited to pay a fee for table space to promote their graduate programs to the undergraduate students at the session. Three departments took advantage of this opportunity, paying $250 each. Many departments requested to participate next year.

Collaboration with HAPS

The Committee members and APS Education staff continue their collaborative efforts with the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS), an association of physiology educators, primarily from community and four-year colleges. The APS exhibits and conducts workshops at the HAPS annual meeting, as well as sponsoring a keynote research update speaker. At the May 2006 HAPS meeting in Austin, TX, Robert Carroll, of East Carolina University School of Medicine, gave an Update Seminar, “The Hot and Cold of Temperature Regulation.” 

HAPS also is a partner in the APS Archive of Teaching Resources, cataloguing past issues of their journal, HAPS Educator, for free access in the digital library.

APS Summer Research Program for Teachers

The program, now in its 16th year, has funding from two NIH institutes (NCRR and NIDDK), in addition to the support provided by the APS. The core program funding is provided by the NCRR Science Education Partnership Awards (SEPA) program. NIDDK funding provides support for additional fellowships for minority teachers or teachers of minority students.  APS funding provides partial stipend support and travel to Experimental Biology for the NCRR-supported teachers. This diversity of funding sources both serves as an indicator of the success of the program and contributes to its longevity. In 2006, the program is supporting 20 teachers from 13 states in an intensive, yearlong professional development program.

Member support for this program continues to be strong, with many members volunteering to host teachers in their laboratories, providing the needed lab materials and supplies for each teacher’s research and, frequently, providing part of the stipend and travel costs for the teacher.

Horizon Research, Inc. continues to serve as the external evaluator for the Summer Research program. The program has been extensively evaluated over its long history. It consistently has strong positive effects on the teaching methods used by teachers (that is, selecting more student-centered methods that build research and investigative skills) and the networks built between and among teachers and researchers, and teacher perceptions of the value of biomedical research and how animals are used in research.

Local Site Team Development

A significant focus of the Frontiers in Physiology program is the development and support of active Local Site Teams (LSTs). LSTs combine the expertise and enthusiasm of physiologists and science teachers to provide effective training workshops for middle and high school science educators in their region. In 2005-2006, new LSTs at Louisville, KY and Birmingham, AL were established and received training and planning support from the Education Office.

EB Workshop for Teachers and Students

Education Committee member Peter Farrell of East Carolina University coordinated the 2006 APS Workshop for High School Teachers and Students. More than 160 San Francisco-area teachers and their students attended the workshop along with APS members, 2005 Frontiers and Explorations Research Teachers (RTs), graduate students and other awardees. The keynote talk, “What Price a Martian? Human Limits to Exploring the Red Planet,” was given by APS member and former astronaut Jim Pawelczyk of Penn State University. His talk was followed by a Careers Panel that included APS members Ken Baldwin of Univ. of California, Irvine, Rudy Ortiz of Univ. of California, Merced, Jim Pawelczyk of Penn State, and Todd Trappe of Ball State University. Twenty APS members served as tour guides during lunch where they took teachers and students through the exhibits and posters and shared a box lunch while discussing physiology careers.

The afternoon student session was led by Barb Goodman of Univ. of North Dakota with assistance from Peter Farrell, Jeff Osborn of Univ. of Kentucky, Robin Looft-Wilson of College of William & Mary, Rayna Gonzales of Univ. of California, Irvine. Students used the “Elvis Experiments” from the APS “Physiology of Fitness” unit to learn about factors affecting flow of liquids through tubing (radius, length, viscosity).  While students were conducting their experiments, their teachers (as well as the 2005 Research Teachers) participated in workshop activities on proprioception and the respiratory system. As in the past, feedback from both teachers and students was very positive and students were especially excited to meet physiologists one-on-one. The committee is planning to continue the program in 2007 in Washington.

My Health, My World

Baylor College of Medicine and APS received funding from NIAID and NCRR to develop and field test two middle school units that focus on the microbiology and the science of alcohol. Each unit is designed to increase understanding by middle school students, their teachers and their families of infectious diseases, the effects of alcohol on human physiology, biomedical research, healthy lifestyle choices, risk factors for disease and the relevance of science to everyday life; stimulate middle school students’ interest and awareness of science and health careers; and promote the teaching and learning of science and health concepts through guided inquiry. The APS will recruit middle school teachers from our past Research Teachers to participate in a field test of the materials, coordinate online training of these teachers, and summarize the field test results for our group.

International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) Awards

The 57th Annual International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) was held in Indianapolis, IN May 8-12, 2006. Nearly 1,500 students from 47 countries, regions and territories competed in the world’s largest pre-college science competition awards. For the 11th year, the APS presented four awards in the form of cash prizes, certificates, and student subscriptions for the best projects in the physiological sciences. Receiving $1,000 and first place was Jonathan Blake Sellon, 18, of Staples High School, Westport, CT for his project titled “Modeling Auditory Attention by Implementing IHC Movement into Frequency Selectivity of the Inner Ear: A Novel Approach to Stimuli Separation.”  Winning an APS award for the second year, Sarah S. Mousa, 18, of Columbia High School, in East Greenbush, NY presented her updated research on “Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Nicotine’s Pro-angiogenesis Activity: Potential Impact on Different Disease Processes.” Last year, Ms. Mousa presented her research using a chick egg angiogenesis model and cultured epithelial cells to examine growth-promoting effects of nicotine. After receiving a patent for her work from last year, Ms. Mousa extended her research to examine the mechanism of the angiogenic effect of nicotine including using antagonists to determine the signaling pathway of nicotine in cultured endothelial and epithelial cells.

One of the two third place awards was given to Sabrina Lakshmi Prabakaran, 15, from Canterbury School in Fort Myers, FL. Her project was entitled, “Treatment of Age-related Macular Degeneration, Year Two: Effect of Intraocular Steroid on Choroidal Neovasculature and Vitreal Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Level.” The second third place project was presented to Sheel Tyle, 14, of Pittsford Mendon High School in Pittsford, NY. His project was titled, “The Impact of Muller Cell Reactivity during Retinal Degeneration” and also addressed macular degeneration. His project demonstrated a unique interaction between Muller cells and photoreceptor cells.

Physiology Understanding Week

The primary objective of Physiology Understanding Week is to increase student interest in and understanding of physiology in their lives and to introduce them to physiology as a possible career. For 2006, the Council approved a moderate expansion of the pilot program with particular emphasis on building and testing the web tools needed to accommodate a significant (and cost effective) expansion of the program.  In addition, possible external funding options will be explored. In 2007, the Committee anticipates a major launch of the program, with an open invitation to all APS members to participate in the program.

Each November, APS members will be encouraged to visit their local school(s), explain what physiology is and what a physiologist does, and lead students in interactive learning activities. This outreach technique is modeled after other scientific societies’ highly successful outreach efforts (Society for Neuroscience’s Brain Awareness Week and American Chemical Society’s Chemistry Week). In 2006-2007, the APS Education Office will identify potential sources of external funds to help support the program.

Use of Animals in Medical Education

Members of the Education and Animal Care and Experimentation Committees developed a policy statement and rationale that describes how the use of laboratories, specifically including animal laboratories, provides a unique and effective educational experience for physiology education at all levels. These materials proved useful as a basis for responding to a Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) challenge of animal use in education in Milwaukee in March, and in responding to a PCRM letter to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in May.