Monmouth College

Team Members:

1. Briefly list the most significant issues in science education facing you and your institution

A) The first year student transition (from high school to college level work). Major problems in this area include students who enter college without the appropriate quantitative, critical reading and study skills. Because of the lack of preparation, we don't retain many of these students in the math and science areas.

B) A effective integration between all the sciences and math. Students often do not see the connections between the disciplines.

C)For upper level students, the development of discipline appropriate professionalism. This includes the development of an understanding of how research is performed and how results are communicated.

D) Technology integration into the curriculum.

E) Integration of science and business.

2. Which of these problems do you think would lend themselves to collaborative efforts at solution?

We believe that A,B,C and D above could lend themselves to collaborative efforts with other ACM colleges. For example, as a collaborative effort for the development of discipline appropriate professionalism, perhaps the ACM could sponsor a research conference for undergraduates to present their research.

3. Are there any other issues that you seek collaboration among your ACM colleagues?
In the sciences, we are looking for facilities with instrumentation that could be shared. For example, shared technology (such supercomputing facilities) with workshops on how to integrate such technology into the curriculum has been suggested by a some of our faculty.