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ABSTRACT The 2011 reportVision and Change: A Call to Action(V&C) resulted from a national effort to rethink biology curriculum.V&Coutlines core concepts and core competencies for biology undergraduates and promotes evidence-based pedagogy, undergraduate research, and inclusive practices. However, it is unclear how much biology educators know aboutV&Cand what motivates educators’ development of their teaching philosophy and practices. We leveraged the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) Network, a group that introduced evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) to instructors through mentoring, journal clubs, and a community of practice, to investigate how muchV&Chas influenced educator knowledge and motivation. Through focus groups, 16 mentors and 22 fellows were asked about their motivations to join PALM, familiarity withV&C, how they learned aboutV&C, and how PALM and/orV&Cshaped the development of their teaching philosophies and strategies. We found that the teaching philosophies and practices of these educators align strongly withV&Cprinciples.V&Cprovided expectancy (established value), while PALM contributed to greater instructor self-efficacy in EBIPs, overall resulting in reformed teaching philosophies and practices. This model highlights the importance of mentorship and community to successfully drive biology education reform. 

ABSTRACT The 2011Vision & Changereport outlined several recommendations for transforming undergraduate biology education, sparking multiple pedagogical reform efforts. Among these was the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) network, an NSF-funded program that provided mentorship and training to instructors on implementing active learning in the classroom. Here, we provide a perspective on how members of the biology education community in PALM view the recommendations ofVision & Change, drawing upon our experiences both as members of PALM and as leaders of an associated project funded by another NSF grant that hosted PALM alumni at various conferences. These efforts have allowed us to gain insight into how our alumni think ofVision & Change, including how they interpret its recommendations, the challenges and opportunities that they view for implementing these recommendations, and the areas they see as critical to be addressed in future national reports for supporting undergraduate biology education. We synthesize these voices here, providing perspectives from a diverse group of biology instructors on what they think aboutVision & Change, and provide recommendations for the biology education community based upon these PALM community voices. 

ABSTRACT The demonstrated gap between skills needed and skills learned within a college education places both undergraduates seeking gainful employment and the employers seeking highly skilled workers at a disadvantage. Recent and up-and-coming college graduates should possess 21st century skills (i.e., communication, collaboration, problem solving), skills that employers deem necessary for the workplace. Research shows that the development of this skillset can help narrow the gap in producing highly skilled graduates for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. We propose the development of 21st century skills by utilizing the project-based learning (PjBL) framework and creating the inclusive biologist exploring active research with students (iBEARS) program, allowing undergraduate students to hone their 21st century skills and prepare for transition and success within the workplace.