NSF Proposal

A Scientific Research Project for the General Education

Program at Southwestern College

(An NSF Funded Project in the Course & Curriculum Development,

Institution-Wide Reform Initiative)

Project Summary

Formulating meaningful public policy in a democracy is difficult if the voters and their representatives cannot grapple effectively with scientific information that pertains to the issues. Part of the solution to this problem lies in revising our educational system so that science is taught as a process in which all citizens are engaged at some level.

In an across-the-curriculum research project students will acquire many of the science process skills essential to scientific literacy. While conducting library as well as laboratory or field research, students will organize information; form and test hypotheses; decide whether data supports a statement; separate correlation from cause and effect; modify their hypotheses as the data demands; and regularly report on their progress to peers and the community. The over-arching goal is to model how scientific research is conducted and used to address real problems.

The research project focuses on water quality and the effects on ecosystems of poor water quality. Each course in the freshmen general education program is involved in research activity. After a period of data collection, students formulate hypotheses and design experiments to test those hypotheses. Student-generated proposals form the basis of the research undertaken by the next class of freshman. Student-designed research plans will also be tackled by advanced courses. Regular symposia promote sharing and synthesis of results between research groups.

This proposal involves all first year students in scientific research. We are especially excited about the impact on education students. The science classes that our future elementary school teachers experience must provide them models for how to integrate science into their curriculum, or they will be handicapped as they attempt that task. In this approach, elementary education students would experience science as related to many general education courses. We hope to provide a model for transforming the role of science in general education curricula.

Project Narrative

I. Results from Prior NSF Support

Southwestern College has not received any NSF support within the past five years.

II. Problem or Question

Formulating meaningful public policy in a democracy is difficult if the voters and their representatives cannot grapple effectively with scientific information that pertains to the issues. Part of the solution to this problem lies in revising our educational system so that all citizens are taught the skills they need to use scientific data in decision making.

At many postsecondary institutions, general education courses that deal with science are either first courses in a major's sequence or watered-down "science appreciation" courses. In addition to mastery of rigorous content, all students need to learn to collect, evaluate and use evidence, which may not be the primary outcome in a first course for majors.

In 1991 at Southwestern College, we had a fairly typical "distribution" requirement for general education consisting of introductory courses in major fields. By faculty vote, this distribution requirement was replaced with the new Integrative Studies program in the fall of 1992. Science literacy was an integral part of the design. Each course in the new curriculum represents a combination of at least two fields of inquiry with a transdisciplinary sequence to explore the relationship between the humanities and natural science.

The first two semesters of the program emphasize history, science and the humanities. Each course is required to represent the integration of at least two traditional disciplines. Examples include:

Ancient Civilizations, where paleontology, anthropology and history tell the story of civilizations from prehistoric tribal life to the great civilizations traditionally studied.
Atom and Cosmos, which explores the connection between the very small (atomic and subatomic processes) and the very large (evolution of the universe).
Creativity, in which the foundation is the traditional fine arts, but scientific, mathematical, entrepreneurial and other kinds of creativity are also explored.
Planet Earth, a study of bioregions with an intentional focus on how varied environments have affected human civilization and how human activity influences our natural environment.

Second year courses provide more options as languages and literature join the dialog. Science-intensive offerings include Environmental Science; History of Science; Biosystems; Truth and Beauty: Chaos and Fractals; Mathematics and Science; Alchemy to Chemistry; and Genetics: Promise and Perils. Three themes are emphasized throughout the two year cycle of general education courses: the origin and nature of matter; the development of ancient and contemporary civilizations; and that mysterious human quality we call creativity or spirituality.

Southwestern College's general education program has several strengths. The science component is enriched by interdisciplinary study without sacrifice of rigor; and communication and quantitative skills are implemented across the curriculum. The main weakness is that most of the laboratory experiences in our general education courses are quite traditional. The result is too much emphasis on specific content. We hope to move toward teaching science as a process in which all citizens are engaged at some level.

III. Goals and Specific Objectives

All students need to function as scientifically literate citizens. In order to permeate our general education program with science process skills, we propose to:

engage the majority of our first year students as well as many upper-level students in some aspect of an interdisiplinary research project,
address a problem to which scientific evidence will pertain,
preserve the interdisciplinary nature of our general education curriculum by including information from many disciplines.

The overarching goal of this approach is to model how scientific research is conducted and used to address real world problems. Specific objectives and the rationale for those objectives follow.

Objectives 1) Students will form and test hypotheses, decide whether data supports a statement, and modify their hypotheses as the data demands.	Rationale Scientific literacy demands an understanding of the open-ended, falsifiable nature of scientific knowledge and the experimental means by which that knowledge is acquired.
2) Students will conduct both library and laboratory or field research, organizing information into useful structures.	Good decision making requires a full picture of the problem and potential solutions.
3) Students will separate correlation from cause and effect and observation from inference in their analysis of data.	These clarifications are crucial to informed debate about problems and their solutions.
4) Students will use math, statistics and computers in problem solving.	Quantitative literacy is almost as much of an issue for Americans as scientific literacy.
5) Students will regularly report on their progress in discussions, poster presentations, and the college and local newspapers.	The challenges of responsibly communicating the results of research are best understood through participation.

IV. Potential Impact and Significance

The general education program at Southwestern College has solid, rigorous science content and has made significant progress in terms of interdisciplinary efforts. The chemistry and biology curricula for majors have implemented innovative strategies to enhance students' mastery of science process skills. This proposal allows us to use these achievements within our science program to enhance an excellent general education curriculum.

Infusing a science-based, interdisciplinary research project into the curriculum is a new model for incorporating science in general education courses. An interdisciplinary research experience will provide rich opportunities for students to achieve the following outcomes:

organize data in patterns and generate hypotheses from data,
use a hypothesis to analyze data for gaps or inconsistencies,
design experimental means to test and refine hypotheses,
describe the relationship between scientific data and public policy decisions,
practice critical thinking skills and evaluating evidence,
consider and weigh contradictory evidence, and
discuss the limitations of science, especially our inability to empirically measure ethics, morality, or spirituality.

An interdisciplinary research project equips and empowers students to draw conclusions based on evidence, and illustrates how and why evidence is gathered.

Science education is changing profoundly. There is consensus about the need for reform and we have a fairly solid theoretical basis for many suggested innovations. While we need continued research about how learning occurs in science, we also need practical examples of successful reform initiatives. In post-secondary education, both diversity and excellence are treasured. We need a large variety of working models which institutions can adapt to their own circumstances. Many institutions may not be ready for a campus-wide research project, however, we envision the adaptation of this model to honors programs, interdepartmental projects, dormitory "learning projects," etc.

V. Procedure and Methods

Southwestern College has transformed itself in the last five years. This metamorphosis has occurred on two levels:

a total reconceptualization of general education as described in Section II, and
major renovation of the biology and chemistry curricula.

The whole curriculum is ripe for infusion of the lessons we have learned in biology and chemistry.

The rapidly expanding body of knowledge in both sciences seemed to demand teaching a larger and larger compendium of facts. In response, faculty rethought their courses. They began reviewing the science education literature, and found that two common themes emerged. These themes and their support from specific recommendations of professional societies are listed below.

Theme one: science courses should focus more on process. Recommendations acknowledge that making room for process skills in crowded courses will necessitate deleting some content.

Recommending Body	Specific Recommendations
American Association for the Advancement of Science	Goals of science education must be clarified.1 Ideas and thinking skills must be emphasized at the expense of content details; quality of understanding is more important than quantity.2,3 Collecting, evaluating and using evidence should be central to science courses.2,3
American Chemical Society	Courses should convey how hypotheses are formed and tested. 4, 5 Courses must communicate the open-ended, falsifiable nature of chemical knowledge and the experimental means for acquiring that knowledge.4, 5
American Society of Zoologists	Factual content must be reduced, and more time spent on conceptual frameworks.7
National Science Teachers Association	Students must be able to comprehend factual prose, organize information into useful structures, decide whether data supports a statement, differentiate correlation from cause and effect and observation from inference, and use math, statistics and computers in problem solving.12 Students need to practice making predictions and generating many possible eventualities from a set of data. They should understand that real issues are complex and precise outcomes impossible to predict.12 Students should learn to apply concepts and principles to new situations, and obtain information independently from a broad range of resources.12 Students should exhibit a spirit of inquiry, exercise scientific values, and distinguish between inference and reasoning from empirical evidence.12 Courses should provide opportunities to collect, interpret, analyze and evaluate data.12

Theme two: quantity and quality of laboratory instruction should be increased.

Recommendations focus on undergraduate research experiences, equipment upgrades and investigative laboratories.

Recommending Body	Specific Recommendations
AAAS	Students should be actively involved and should begin with questions about nature.2,3 Collecting, evaluating and using evidence should be central to science courses.2,3
ACS	Investigative labs should involve 30% of the time in intro courses.4, 5 Research projects should be included as early as the freshman year.6 Lab work should be expanded and upgraded.6
NSF	Laboratory instruction needs enhancement to develop techniques and skills and teach lab safety and proper disposal; college instrumentation needs to be upgraded.8 Co-op programs and summer internships are recommended for both students and faculty to enhance skills and supplement lab instruction.9 Undergraduate research opportunities should be more available.9
NSTA	Colleges need resources to upgrade equipment.11 Courses should provide opportunities to collect, interpret, analyze and evaluate data.12
Sigma Xi	Hands-on investigations should be a part of every course.13 More undergraduates should have the opportunity to participate in research.13 Students need more hands-on experience with investigating phenomena.14

Biology and chemistry faculty experimented with their courses in an attempt to reach some of these goals. Outcomes of this ferment include:

Introductory microbiology no longer uses a textbook and instead relies on recent articles from the literature.15
General and organic chemistry classes require students to plan and carry out some experiments as individual or group "mini-projects."16
Biochemistry, animal physiology, analytical chemistry and microbiology courses all devote one-half of the lab time to an independent small-group project.17, 18
Animal physiology, cell biology, and microbiology supplement traditional lectures with discussion groups focused on problems or journal articles.19, 20
Biochemistry and animal physiology lab projects are organized around a central theme and result in a poster session.

Of these approaches, lab projects that are related to a theme have been the most productive. This format has much in common with real science as it is practiced. Professional scientists work in small groups on pieces of larger problems, and benefit by communication between individual research groups. We believe it is precisely this congruence with the "real world" that makes thematically connected lab projects so enriching for students.

We wish to expand this concept of a research environment to the general education curriculum. The current curriculum has solid, rigorous courses with significant science components. However, labs tend to be fairly traditional and general education students are not asked to step into the world of research science. Students will learn about science through participation when we infuse general education courses with cross-disciplinary research.

The Research Topic

Faculty whose courses will be involved in the research project developed criteria for selection of a research problem. These included:

The problem is one which science can address significantly.
The issue is relevant to both our community and the nation.
The topic is of interest to students and faculty within and outside of the sciences.
The project is long-term or there is potential for growth into other areas.

After considering a number of possible lines of inquiry, we have selected stream quality in Cowley County as a general topic. This subject matter offers us a number of advantages:

Environmental issues such as quality of drinking stream are seen as inherently relevant by almost all students and faculty.
A significant amount of historical data related to stream quality gathered in the past twenty years is available, although it was not collected and is still not organized systematically.
The Cowley County Conservation District (CCCD) has studied stream quality issues and has developed a Non-Point Source Pollution Program to address problems.
The CCCD Non-Point Source Pollution Program is primarily designed to educate appropriate parties about how to reduce their contribution to water pollution. There is currently no comprehensive plan for monitoring water quality to assess the effectiveness of educational efforts.
Stream quality issues are unlikely to disappear in this county in the foreseeable future. Continued monitoring of improvements or deterioration in water quality will be a useful public service for many years.
Winfield is situated near both the Arkansas River and Walnut River basins with numerous tributaries within a fifteen mile radius.

The Structure of An Interdisciplinary Research Program in the General Education Curriculum

Table I is an overview of our proposed interdisciplinary investigation of stream quality. It includes a timeline and identifies key components for which NSF funding is requested.

Table 1. GENERAL EDUCATION INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH PROJECT TIMELINE

Time Period	Program Activities	NSF Funding
Spring, 1997	Search for Project Assistant initiated Steering Committee organized	Institutional support
Fall, 1997	Project Assistant on staff Student Mentor recruitment Selection of library and computer software materials Develop liaisons with CCCD	Salary/Benefits for Project Assistant (Fall, 1997 through Spring, 2000) Acquisition of library and computer support materials
Winter, 1998	Project Asst. initiates literature review and data gathering, assisted by the Steering Committee Begin development of video resources and computer-assisted modules	Steering Committee stipends Purchase of water analysis kits
Spring, 1998	Student Mentor training Refinement of Video resources and computer- assisted modules Pilot project Organization of Advisory Committee	Student Mentor hourly wages
Summer, 1998	Completion of literature search and data gathering Development of preliminary questions and data collection plan for fall, 1998 Advisory Committee reviews fall research plan Site selection and landowner permission	Steering Committee stipends Student Mentor stipends Purchase of computers
Fall, 1998	Data collecting, Planet Earth class Data collecting, Creativity class Graphing and application of statistics, Ancient Civilization class Information transfer onto the internet Development of preliminary hypotheses, Planet Earth and Creativity classes	Student Mentor hourly wages Partial salary for release from one course for Ancient Civilization instructors
Spring, 1999	Composite data analysis, hypothesis development and formulation of research proposals by Atom and Cosmos and Modern Civilization classes Data presentation workshop in Applied Creativity class Poster Presentations	Student Mentor hourly wages Partial salary for release from one course for Atom and Cosmos and Modern Civilization instructors
Summer, 1999	Steering Committee identifies promising/ significant hypotheses SC selects advanced integrated studies and major courses for participation SC determines field database to be developed by first-year integrated studies classes for fall of 1999 Video and computer resource development Advisory Committee, formative evaluation	Steering Committee stipends Student Mentor stipends Library and computer software materials
Fall, 1999	Repeat of Fall, 1998 activities with the addition of: Testing of hypotheses by advanced integrated and upper level major classes Poster presentations	Student Mentor hourly wages
Spring, 2000	Repeat of Spring, 1999 activities with the addition of: Analysis and further testing of hypotheses by advanced integrated studies and upper level major classes Poster Presentations	Student Mentor hourly wages
Summer, 2000	Advisory Committee, summative evaluation Dissemination of results by Steering Committee	Steering Committee Stipends

The First Year

Our first year of funding is a pre-implementation period of planning for execution of the research project. During this period, the project assistant and the rest of the project steering committee will complete a number of tasks, including:

gathering data from local agencies that have information on water quality in Kansas,
conducting a thorough literature review,
analyzing available data and choosing the initial water quality parameters to be measured,
securing landowner permission for access to study sites on private property,
recruiting and training upper-level students to assist teams of freshmen with field work,
developing liaisons with the Cowley County Conservation District to ensure that data gathered will be publicly available and useful,
selecting support resources like the "Environmental Decision Making" module of BioQuest to enhance students' sophistication in problem-solving,
creating video resources to train students to identify species, take samples properly, use reagents in test kits, etc.,
constructing computer-assisted modules for evaluating mastery of skills addressed in the videos, and
testing training resources with pilot groups of nonscience students.

The research project steering committee will consist of Charles Hunter, Professor of Biology; Carolyn Herman, Assistant Professor of Chemistry; Larry Wilgers, Professor of History; Michael Wilder, Professor of Music; and the project assistant, an additional temporary science faculty member hired to facilitate the start-up phase of this project. This group contains expertise in both biology and chemistry which will be essential to supporting the research project. It also involves several nonscience faculty who will play a major role in the first year of implementation.

Approximately twenty-five student mentors will be selected from the pool of upper-level science students and trained during this period. During implementation of the research project, student mentors will be responsible for accompanying freshman teams to study sites and monitoring the quality of data collection.

The Second Year

In the first year of implementation, all freshmen will be involved and water quality measurements in local streams will take place in two courses. In the freshman year, Southwestern College has a true core curriculum. First-year students must enroll in two general education courses each semester and for most students there are only three choices in the fall: Planet Earth, Creativity or Ancient Civilizations.

Planet Earth is a freshman level study of bioregions in our general education program. The laboratory portion of this course has always focused on our local bioregion and has included some field work. At the inauguration of this project, the primary shift will be that the study of our local bioregion will be organized around water quality and the impact of poor water quality on local ecosystems. Field work will consist of student teams and a student mentor examining selected aquatic habitats in Cowley County and conducting measurements of water quality. These will range from traditional indices like biological oxygen demand (BOD), nitrate levels and coliform counts to measurements of biodiversity and estimates of population size in selected species. Dr. Hunter, one of the two professors responsible for this course, noted the advantages of this design:

Students describe the field experiences as one of the most significant aspects of the Planet Earth course. Our plan is to expand that experience and move from a purely descriptive approach to a combination descriptive/analytical approach.

Creativity, a freshman-level study of the creative process, will also involve students and mentors in data collection in the fall semester. This course has been divided into three sections or units of approximately four weeks each. Creativity in math and science has always been integrated into this course, but in order to tie the course more firmly to the campus research project, one four-week unit will be explicitly devoted to creativity in the sciences. Field experiences similar to those described above for Planet Earth will be an integral component of this unit. Dr.Wilder, the coordinator of the Creativity course, expressed his enthusiasm for Creativity student involvement:

In helping students explore creativity, we are always searching for ways to connect the inquiry to "real-world" situations. This project offers an opportunity to do just that.

The final fall option for freshmen is Ancient Civilizations. Although this course will not assign field work, students in Ancient Civilizations will practice a variety of quantitative skills including graphing; finding means and standard deviations; and using a few basic tools of inferential statistics, such as a t-test for significance of difference between two sample means. The quantitative skills will be applied to the content of the course. Dr. Schmidt, one of the two instructors for the course, says

Students will use quantitative skills during laboratory sessions by making measements on, and drawing graphs, conclusions and inferences from the fossil hominid skull casts purchased to support this quantitative unit. This unit represents but a beginning look at basic statistics - a look which we hope will encourage more students to enroll in Math 215: Introduction to Statistics.

Approximately two-thirds of the students collecting data in the other two fall options will be co-enrolled in this course. The data handling skills that they learn in Ancient Civilizations will apply to the eventual presentation of their results.

Towards the end of the fall semester, each team of students from Planet Earth and Creativity will store their data digitally so that it will be available from a campus research home page. Teams will also develop hypotheses from their data and make them available from the research home page.

In the Spring semester, Southwestern students are once again asked to choose two of three courses: Atom and Cosmos, Modern Civilizations and Applied Creativity. Integrating the next step of our research project into two courses, therefore, will involve the entire freshman class. Both Atom and Cosmos and Modern Civilizations will take a two to three week hiatus from normal coursework mid-semester to revisit the data gathered the previous fall. In addition to examining the information that was collected by student groups, students will also consider the data on water quality that the project steering committee gathers from other sources. During this two to three week intensive research workshop, students will:

organize and analyze the data already available,
test hypotheses generated the previous fall by considering additional data,
refine existing hypotheses and generate new hypotheses from the examination of data, and
design research strategies to further test and refine hypothesis.

We expect the resulting research strategies to be inherently interdisciplinary. For instance, if the data indicates that nitrate levels in local streams are increasing despite the Cowley County Conservation District's education efforts, a number of potential projects for the following year can be generated. Three will serve as examples. First, are nitrate levels in fact increasing, or does the data represent normal fluctuations? More extensive testing the following year would be one strategy for investigating this question, and could be carried out by incoming freshmen. Second, what impact does nitrate level have on selected stream fishes or freshwater mussels? This and other questions provide an opportunity for upper-division science courses like animal physiology and invertebrate zoology to tackle a research project related to a campus-wide theme. Third, is the education program of the CCCD having the opposite of the desired effect? Projects to explore this possibility would probably take place in upper-level courses within social sciences, mass communication or other disciplines which we traditionally have not integrated with science at the undergraduate level.

Finally, the last segment of Applied Creativity will focus on effective visual presentation of data. At the end of this unit in Applied Creativity, all first-year students present their research in a poster session. The steering committee and student mentors will serve as adjudicators of the freshmen posters, with each poster receiving an evaluation by one faculty member and two mentors. Members of our Cowley County community as well as parents and friends of the college are invited. In addition to this formal exchange of information, a column in the school newspaper could report on a different aspect of the research project in each issue. Some of these articles would be forwarded to the local newspaper.

The Third Year

This is our second year of implementation. In addition to the freshman courses listed above, sophomore general education courses, courses in the major and our senior capstone course are invited to share in the research. Prior to the beginning of the second year, the steering committee completes several tasks:

Meets with the advisory board (which is fully described in Section VII, Evaluation) to determine which of the students' research proposals will most benefit the local community.
Seeks information about which of the research plans devised by students the previous spring are of interest to faculty in sophomore level general education courses and/or courses within majors.
Reviews the assessment of the previous spring poster session to determine if any research skills are not being mastered at an appropriate level.
Devises strategies for more effectively teaching the research skills identified as problematic in the assessment.

With this input, student research proposals are evaluated by the steering committee for feasibility. One or more are chosen as the framework for the new cycle of data gathering and analysis with the entering freshman class. Other questions are open to study in advanced courses, and the steering committee provides support for initiation of complementary research programs in upper-level classes. Both fall and spring semesters include a poster session of research reports from upper-level students as well as freshmen. Freshmen posters continue to be evaluated by the steering committee and mentors. Each subsequent year would be similar to the second year of implementation.

Fourth and Subsequent Years

After one full cycle of implementation, the project assistant's position will no longer be crucial. A solid foundation of historical data will have been built and will continue to support the project. Strong relationships with local agencies will have been forged and can be nurtured with less intensive contact. Internal marketing for the project will no longer be critical: the student accomplishment evident at poster sessions will be a sufficient recruiting tool for new faculty. The steering committee will continue to function without the project assistant.

Although the project assistant salary and externally funded release time for faculty to participate in the project will no longer be necessary, funds will still be required to support student mentor stipends, purchase materials required for research projects, and update computers and software. Some of these expenses will be covered by normal departmental operating budgets in the Integrative Studies program and the natural sciences. We also anticipate that if the research results are genuinely useful to local agencies and community policy makers, funding from local and state government sources and even local industry will be relatively easy to obtain.

The Academic Setting

At Southwestern College, faculty operate from a perspective of helping to maximize student success within the student's potential. There is commitment on the part of the faculty to use student-centered teaching styles that allow classmates, with guidance, to share their knowledge and discover new knowledge together.

Ours seems to be the ideal structure in which to introduce a campus-wide research project. Group projects are already a part of many courses campus-wide and faculty agree that student learning is high in such an environment. The only initial dissatisfaction with this strategy in chemistry and biology was the level of analysis that resulted from the efforts of inexperienced students in a short period of time. Our subsequent efforts in upper-level science courses seem to provide one answer to this dilemma, however. When students are all engaged in similar work, the depth of learning expands dramatically. In particular, the sharing of results intermediately and at the end of a project produces a synergistic effect which enhances students' mastery of the subject at higher cognitive levels.

Southwestern College is a liberal arts institution with a total of about 750 students. Biology and elementary education are the largest majors, with 12% and and 10% of the enrollment, respectively. By the third year of implementation, every student who entered as a freshman will have made several contributions to an ongoing research effort. We feel that this experience will have enormous benefits for all students, including science students. We are especially excited about the impact on education students. Many elementary and secondary education programs, including Southwestern's, are moving toward a more wholistic approach, where one unit integrates all the traditional subjects. The science classes that our future elementary school teachers experience must provide them models for how to integrate science into their curriculum, or they will be handicapped as they attempt that task. In the approach that we propose, elementary education students would experience science as related to every first-year general education course in which they enrolled.

The physical resources at Southwestern College are precisely appropriate for implementation of this curricular experiment. The College has installed a fiber-optic backbone to network the entire campus. Library research resources include DIALOG and FirstSearch databases, Chemical Abstracts on-line searching, other universities' on-line card catalogs, and InfoTrac. The library is linked to this network, so that many library resources are available from any campus computer terminal. Internet access through the fiber-optic backbone enhances traditional library resources. Southwestern has just completed construction of an Integrative Studies Center with state-of-the-art technology for teaching and learning. We are committed to building a new science facility. The architectural plan includes a science education/integrative studies laboratory with modern instrumentation and computer resources for interdisciplinary research. Ground-breaking is anticipated in the summer of 1996.

The institutional support for this project is also exemplary. The Academic Dean, Director of Integrative Studies and the Chairs of each of the academic divisions have expressed their commitment to this project. Professor Daniel F. Daniel, Director of Integrative Studies comments:

When we instituted the Integrative Studies Program the faculty determined seven educational components that should be developed across the curriculum. These are reading, writing, speaking, quantification, computing, ethics and ecology. We have struggled with ecology as particularly difficult to implement across the disciplines. This proposal would meet that faculty directive. I whole-heartedly support and look forward to implementing it.

Professor Michael Wilder, chair of the Division of Performing Arts, has this to say:

Much of the challenge in the performing arts is to encourage students to think and create independently. The temptation in applied lessons, for example, is to teach the student how the piece "should be played." Though this seems initially the most expedient avenue to mastery, it robs the student of the opportunity for personal expression. The performing arts should encourage students to examine various possibilities and then develop personal conviction about selected alternatives. The role of the teacher is shifted from delivering the "correct" way of interpreting a passage to challenging the student to examine myriad possible interpretations and further challenging the student to select and defend an interpretation.

The scientific endeavor offers an excellent model for this type of learning environment. Scientists are challenged to gather data and continually refine and alter hypotheses. To "jump to conclusions" is an enemy of the scientific process. It also plagues those who would seek to assist student artists in the development of personal conviction and expression.

Southwestern College is unique in its lack of inter-departmental "turf wars" and its institutional commitment to integration and cooperation between disciplines. Research is valued not only because it promotes scientific literacy, but also because it enhances students' preparation for any major on campus.

VI. Anticipated Results

There are four main products resulting from this project which will be available to other institutions:

Computerized modules for student drill and testing mastery of skills essential to conducting the research. For example, a computer program for students to practice identifying species of plants or animals will facilitate their field work in Planet Earth. The specific computer programs would be wholly pertinent to local high schools and perhaps even middle schools. The structure and approach provides a concrete model for many institutions.
Pedagogical publications with detailed descriptions of the project, the approach we used for designing course contributions and the learning outcomes.
Publication of research results from some aspects of the project.
Research reports to local government agencies, which provide baseline data or information pertaining to policy decisions.

VII. Evaluation

An advisory board consisting of four persons from varied backgrounds will be assembled at the outset to provide input into the project. The role of this group will be both consultative and evaluative. Involvement during the first year is critical in assisting the project director with the choice of specific study sites and key parameters to be measured. The high school teacher on the advisory board will also provide information about whether computer resources developed for the project will truly be transferrable to high school and/or middle school settings. The committee's primary responsibility during the second and third year will be to document the impact of the project through a written final evaluation, and meet less formally with the steering committee to advise them as they proceed with the project.

The proposed composition of the four-person advisory board is as follows:

Russ Tomevi, Chair of the Non-Point Source Pollution Program Steering Committee; Director of Public Works, Winfield, Kansas.
Susan Carver, Chemistry teacher, Winfield High School; Her classes have conducted surface and groundwater testing for the Cowley County Conservation District.
Two members of the county or city commission to be selected from the officials serving during year one of the project.

The project steering committee will also track the the number of reports to local agencies and the number of articles published in the local newspaper containing data or conclusions from the project.

In addition to these assessments of the impact on the local community, a number of internal measures of success will be conducted. First, the total number of Southwestern freshmen will be compared to the number of first-year students who actually enter data into the aggregate in the fall semester, and the number who actually present a poster in the spring. This will enable us to determine how close we are to our goal of engaging all of our freshmen in an interdisciplinary research project. We also plan to compare the ratio of nonscience to science courses and nonscience to science majors involved by year three. This will allow us to determine if our project is truly interdisciplinary. Finally, Figure I is a preliminary example of an assessment tool that will be used by faculty and student mentors to determine whether students are demonstrating the science process and research skills outcomes that this project is intended to teach. Assessment procedures will be maintained as an integral part of the the project following the final year of funding.

FIGURE I

ASSESSMENT RUBRIC FOR POSTERS

	NoAttempt	Some Evidence	Some Mistakes Made	Well Done
1) Student poster clearly indicates a hypothesis.	0	1	2	3
2) Data on poster support the hypothesis.	0	1	2	3
3) Data are drawn from library and field research.	0	1	2	3
4) Organization of the poster facilitates audience comprehension.	0	1	2	3
5) The student separates correlation from cause and effect and observation from inference in their analysis of data.	0	1	2	3
6) Graphs are drawn and labeled correctly.	0	1	2	3
7) Statistical tools are used correctly and the data available, or conflicting evidence is clearly identified.	0	1	2	3
8) The hypothesis is consistent with all the data available, or conflicting evidence is clearly identified	0	1	2	3
9) The proposal suggested to further test the hypothesis is well-conceived.	0	1	2	3

VIII. Dissemination

Computer resources will be supplied free of charge to regional secondary and middle schools. A workshop to describe the materials and their use will be conducted during the spring of the second year of funding.

Descriptions of the project and the results will be submitted for publication in nationally recognized science and science education journals. Papers will also be presented to the American Zoological Society and the education division of the American Chemical Society. Students will present their own research at the West Texas A&M University Student Research Conference and the Kansas Academy of Science annual meeting.

References Cited

1. Report Details AAAS Response to 'Crisis in Science Education.' Science, 234, 1986, 752 - 53

2. Science For All Americans, Project 2061, AAAS, Washington, D.C., 1989

3. Science For All Americans, A Project 2061 Report on Literacy Goals in Science, Mathematics and Technology. AAAS, Washington, D.C., 1989

4. ACS Task Force Frame Recommendations on Education. C&E News,62 (19), 1984, 34-37

5. Tomorrow. The Report of the Task Force for the Study of Chemistry Education in the United States. ACS, Washington, D.C., 1984

6. Education for New Technology. C&E News, 65 (43), 1987, 34 - 36, 40 - 48

7. Moore, J. Science as a Way of Knowing. Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Zoologists, Denver, CO, 1984

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