Teaching Biology for a Sustainable Future

Extract

Students at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, can now take an innovative biology course in which an integrated, interdisciplinary, problem-based approach is used—one that the scientific community itself is promoting. The first course in a four-semester sequence, Biology 123—The Living World: Concepts and Connections—explores real-world problems and biology's role in addressing these major societal issues.

“We thought we could do a better job to help students retain conceptual knowledge from one course to the next and also to help students identify early on what you can do with a biology major,” says Professor David Koetje, who coteaches the course with Associate Professor Amy Wilstermann.

In Bio123, students learn core biological concepts while developing their problem-solving and quantitative skills and applying their new knowledge to societal challenges related to food, the environment, energy, and health. The students work in teams and do not read a traditional textbook. Instead, they read trade books, such as Anthony Barnosky's Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming and Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. “We spend time explaining to the students our rationale for doing the course this way and why we emphasize teamwork,” Wilstermann says.