Teaching and Learning Evolution in America: Darwin’s Role in the Classroom

Friday, February 13, 2009, 4:30-7:30 p.m.
Location: PIMA Auditorium, ASU Memorial Union 230

Moderator

: Caitlin Schrein is a Doctoral Student, School of Human Evolution and Social Change and a Teaching Assistant in the School of Life Sciences. She received her B.A. in Environmental Biology with a concentration in Anthropology from Columbia University in New York and her M.A. in Anthropology from ASU in 2004. Caitlin’s doctoral dissertation research is titled: “Where did you come from, where will you go? The impact of human biological evolution education on the personal and academic achievements and goals of America’s public university students.” Caitlin has worked extensively in teaching and outreach with youth, since 1996. As a graduate student at ASU, Caitlin was part of the National Science Foundation’s GK-12 program developing inquiry-based science curricula for the teachers’ classrooms. She was also co-chair for the AAAS Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division 81st annual meeting symposium “Partnerships Between STEM Research and K-12 Classrooms” and presented the talk: “Exploring the unifying concepts and processes standard in the secondary classroom: Bridging the gap between life science and science & technology content with form and function.” Caitlin has been a teaching and laboratory assistant for ASM 104 Bones Stones and Human Evolution, ASM 344 Fossil Hominids, BIO 188 General Biology and BIO 201 Anatomy and Physiology. She is also adjunct faculty at Mesa Community College where she has taught ASM 104. In addition her teaching activities, Caitlin’s doctoral research has included paleoanthropological fieldwork in France, Greece, and Kenya.

Panelists

: Sarah Brem is an Associate Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at Arizona State University. A cognitive scientist, her research focuses on public use and understanding of scientific and technical information. She is the author of a number of journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports, and the recipient of a National Science Foundation Early Career Award. Her work focuses on affective reactions to evolutionary theory, and how they might be connected to cognitive obstacles to understanding the theory. She is trained in cognitive science and in the history and philosophy of science. She is also part of the Evolution Challenges, an NSF funded project to examine the educational challenges (cognitive, developmental, and emotional) to learning about evolution. The project involves 50 scholars whose backgrounds range from paleontologists to developmental psychologists.

: James Elser is a professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Science and Associate Director for Research and Training Initiatives in ASU's School of Life Sciences. His research involves the integrative field of biological stoichiometry, the study of balance of energy and multiple chemical elements in living systems. While this work is primarily ecological in focus and includes studies of both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and biota, the approach uses an evolutionary perspective to integrate levels of organization from the molecule and cell to the ecosystem. Research projects extend from field studies of biogeochemistry and food web interactions in lakes to the evolution of proteomes to the evolutionary ecology of cancer. Most recently he is a co-PI on the newly funded NASA Astrobiology Institute project "Follow The Elements" which seeks to understand the evolution of element use and distribution in living things, on planets, and in the universe. Elser earned a BS degree (Biology) from the University of Notre Dame, an MS degree (Ecology) from the University of Tennessee, and a PhD degree (Ecology) from the University of California-Davis. Since arriving at ASU, Elser has taught evolution, among other things, to more than 10,000 students in the introductory biology course "The Living World". In 2008, he was named the ASU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor and was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

: Juergen Gadau Associate Professor
School of Life Sciences
Dr. Gadau is an Associate Professor and currently the Associate Director for Graduate Studies for the School of Life Sciences. His research interests are in evolutionary genetics, behavioral ecology and sociobiology with a focus on the genetic basis of speciation and adaptations in social insects (e.g. ants, bees or wasps). He is also working on the evolution of social complexity and a core faculty of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity. He just finished co-editing a book on the ”Organization of Insect Societies - From Genome to Sociocomplexity“ by the Harvard University Press. He is one of the initiators and leaders for the genome sequencing of the parasitoid wasp Nasonia. At ASU he is teaching Evolution, Entomologie, Invertebrate Zoology and Genetics for undergraduate students. Dr. Gadau received his PhD at the University of Würzburg in 1997, was a PostDoc at the University of California, Davis and an Assistant Professor in Germany before he joined ASU in December 2004 as Assistant Professor.

: Gary Marchant is the Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law and Ethics at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He is also a Professor of Life Sciences at ASU and Executive Director of the ASU Center for the Study of Law, Science and Technology. Professor Marchant has a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of British Columbia, a Masters of Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government , and a law degree from Harvard. Prior to joining the ASU faculty in 1999, he was a partner in a Washington, D.C. law firm where his practice focused on environmental and administrative law. Professor Marchant teaches and researches in the subject areas of environmental law, risk assessment and risk management, genetics and the law, biotechnology law, food and drug law, legal aspects of nanotechnology, and law, science and technology.