Initial Publication Date: March 3, 2014

National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate Education in Biology

These unique Institutes are designed to model the scientific teaching principles on which they are founded and draw on the expertise of both participants and presenters. The Summer Institutes have provided a venue since 2004 for teams of faculty from primarily research-intensive universities to meet for five days of in-depth discussions, demonstrations, and working sessions on research-based approaches to undergraduate biology education.

Discipline: Biology, but increasingly with connections to other disciplines

Workshop Leaders (PIs): Depends on the location of an Institute (there will be seven Institutes during summer 2013).

Leaders of the Executive Committee for the Summer Institutes include Jo Handelsman, Yale University, and William Wood, University of Colorado (Emeritus). Jay Labov serves as the liaison representative from the National Research Council.

Funding Source(s): Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Cost per participant: Because the new regional institutes vary greatly in the facilities and services used for their institutes, the cost per participant is also different for each of them. We calculate that the range of costs per person for the 2011 Institutes was about $550 to $900 per person.

Costs/Fees paid by the participants (or their home institutions): This also varies by Institute. For example, because of differences in costs to stage the Institutes at universities, in 2011 some required that participants or their home institutions pay only for travel to the site while others also asked participants to cover part or all of the cost of lodging and meals.

Target Audience: Teams of faculty. We recommend strongly that there be at least one senior faculty member or administrator as part of the team of two people (sometimes three people if a reasonable case for adding a person is made in the college's or university's application).

Typical Attendance: about 35 participants at each Institute.

Workshop Duration: typically five days – begins Monday with dinner and ends on Saturday at noon.

When Offered: During the summer, this year at seven locations around the country (up from five in 2011, seven in 2012, and one in Madison, WI from 2004-2010)

Program Description (Acrobat (PDF) 329kB Feb14 14)

Program Evaluation (Acrobat (PDF) 205kB Feb14 14)