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JAMES R. MORRIS is Professor of Biology at Brandeis University. He teaches a wide variety of courses for majors and non-majors, including introductory biology, evolution, genetics and genomics, epigenetics, comparative vertebrate anatomy, and a first-year seminar on Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards from Brandeis and Harvard. His research focuses on the rapidly growing field of epigenetics, making use of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism. He currently pursues this research with undergraduates in order to give them the opportunity to do genuine, laboratory-based research early in their scientific careers. Dr. Morris received a PhD in genetics from Harvard University and an MD from Harvard Medical School. He was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, and a National Academies Education Fellow and Mentor in the Life Sciences. He also writes short essays on science, medicine, and teaching at his Science Whys blog (http://blogs.brandeis.edu/sciencewhys).

DANIEL L. HARTL is Higgins Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. He has taught highly popular courses in genetics and evolution at both the introductory and advanced levels. His lab studies molecular evolutionary genetics and population genetics and genomics. Dr. Hartl is the recipient of the Samuel Weiner Outstanding Scholar Award as well as the Gold Medal of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as President of the Genetics Society of America and President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. Dr. Hartl’s PhD is from the University of Wisconsin, and he did postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the Harvard faculty, he served on the faculties of the University of Minnesota, Purdue University, and Washington University Medical School. In addition to publishing more than 400 scientific articles, Dr. Hartl has authored or coauthored 30 books.

ANDREW H. KNOLL is Fisher Professor of Natural History in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is also Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Dr. Knoll teaches introductory courses in both departments. His research focuses on the early evolution of life, Precambrian environmental history, and the interconnections between the two. He has also worked extensively on the early evolution of animals, mass extinction, and plant evolution. He currently serves on the science team for NASA’s mission to Mars. Dr. Knoll received the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science for Life on a Young Planet. Other honors include the Paleontological Society Medal and Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society, London. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. He received his PhD from Harvard University and then taught at Oberlin College before returning to Harvard.

ROBERT A. LUE is Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University and the Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Dr. Lue has a longstanding commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and research, and chaired the faculty committee that developed the first integrated science foundation in the country to serve science majors as well as pre-medical students. The founding director of Life Sciences Education at Harvard, Dr. Lue led a complete redesign of the introductory curriculum, redefining how the university can more effectively foster new generations of scientists as well as science-literate citizens. Dr. Lue has also developed award-winning multimedia, including the animation “The Inner Life of the Cell.” He has coauthored undergraduate biology textbooks and chaired education conferences on college biology for the National Academies and the National Science Foundation and on diversity in science for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health. In 2012, Dr. Lue’s extensive work on using technology to enhance learning took a new direction when he became faculty director of university-wide online education initiative HarvardX; he now helps to shape Harvard’s engagement in online learning to reinforce its commitment to teaching excellence. Dr. Lue earned his PhD from Harvard University.

MELISSA MICHAEL is Director for Core Curriculum and Assistant Director for Undergraduate Instruction for the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A cell biologist, she primarily focuses on the continuing development of the School’s undergraduate curricula. She is currently engaged in several projects aimed at improving instruction and assessment at the course and program levels. Her research focuses primarily on how creative assessment strategies affect student learning outcomes, and how outcomes in large-enrollment courses can be improved through the use of formative assessment in active classrooms.

ANDREW BERRY is Lecturer in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and an undergraduate advisor in the Life Sciences at Harvard University. With research interests in evolutionary biology and history of science, he teaches courses that either focus on one of the areas or combine the two. He has written two books: Infinite Tropics, a collection of the writings of Alfred Russel Wallace, and, with James D. Watson, DNA: The Secret of Life, which is part history, part exploration of the controversies surrounding DNA-based technologies.

ANDREW A. BIEWENER is Charles P. Lyman Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Director of the Concord Field Station. He teaches both introductory and advanced courses in anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics. His research focuses on the comparative biomechanics and neuromuscular control of mammalian and avian locomotion, with relevance to biorobotics. He is currently Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Experimental Biology. He also served as President of the American Society of Biomechanics.

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BRIAN D. FARRELL is Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator in Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He is an authority on coevolution between insects and plants and a specialist on the biology of beetles. He is the author of many scientific papers and book chapters on the evolution of ecological interactions between plants, beetles, and other insects in the tropics and temperate zone. Professor Farrell also spearheads initiatives to repatriate digital information from scientific specimens of insects in museums to their tropical countries of origin. In 2011–2012, he was a Fulbright Scholar to the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Professor Farrell received a BA degree in Zoology and Botany from the University of Vermont and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland.

N. MICHELE HOLBROOK is Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. She teaches an introductory course on biodiversity as well as advanced courses in plant biology. She studies the physics and physiology of vascular transport in plants with the goal of understanding how constraints on the movement of water and solutes between soil and leaves influences ecological and evolutionary processes.

ASSESSMENT AUTHORS

JEAN HEITZ is a Distinguished Faculty Associate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI. She has worked with the two-semester introductory sequence for biological sciences majors for over 30 years. Her primary roles include developing both interactive discussion/recitation activities designed to uncover and modify misconceptions in biology and open-ended process-oriented labs designed to give students a more authentic experience with science. The lab experience includes engaging all second-semester students in independent research, either mentored research or a library-based meta-analysis of an open question in the literature. She is also the advisor to the Peer Learning Association and is actively involved in TA training. She has taught a graduate course in “Teaching College Biology,” has presented active-learning workshops at a number of national and international meetings, and has published a variety of lab modules, workbooks, and articles related to biology education.

MARK HENS is Associate Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where he has taught introductory biology since 1996. He is a National Academies Education Mentor in the Life Sciences and is the director of his department’s Introductory Biology Program. In this role, he guided the development of a comprehensive set of assessable student learning outcomes for the two-semester introductory biology course required of all science majors at UNCG. In various leadership roles in general education, both on his campus and statewide, he was instrumental in crafting a common set of assessable student learning outcomes for all natural science courses for which students receive general education credit on the sixteen campuses of the University of North Carolina system.

JOHN MERRILL is Director of the Biological Sciences Program in the College of Natural Science at Michigan State University. This program administers the core biology course sequence required for all science majors. He is a National Academies Education Mentor in the Life Sciences. In recent years he has focused his research on teaching and learning with emphasis on classroom interventions and enhanced assessment. A particularly active area is the NSF-funded development of computer tools for automatic scoring of students’ open-ended responses to conceptual assessment questions, with the goal of making it feasible to use open-response questions in large-enrollment classes.

RANDALL PHILLIS is Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has taught in the majors introductory biology course at this institution for 19 years and is a National Academies Education Mentor in the Life Sciences. With help from the Pew Center for Academic Transformation (1999), he has been instrumental in transforming the introductory biology course to an active learning format that makes use of classroom communication systems. He also participates in an NSF-funded project to design model-based reasoning assessment tools for use in class and on exams. These tools are being designed to develop and evaluate student scientific reasoning skills, with a focus on topics in introductory biology.

DEBRA PIRES is an Academic Administrator at the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches the introductory courses in the Life Sciences Core Curriculum. She is also the Instructional Consultant for the Center for Education Innovation & Learning in the Sciences (CEILS). Many of her efforts are focused on curricular redesign of introductory biology courses. Through her work with CEILS, she coordinates faculty development workshops across several departments to facilitate pedagogical changes associated with curricular developments. Her current research focuses on what impact the experience of active learning pedagogies in lower division courses may have on student performance and concept retention in upper division courses.

ASSESSMENT CONTRIBUTORS

ELENA R. LOZOVSKY, Principal Staff Scientist, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

FULTON ROCKWELL, Research Associate, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University