Educators, administrators, and students working to improve science and mathematics education will present their work on Capitol Hill during a poster session on April 15, 2008, in the Rayburn House Office Building, in Washington, D.C.
One Beloit College faculty member and two students have been invited to participate by making a presentation to a congressional panel chaired by Wisconsin Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin about an award-winning course called “Slow Food.”
Professor of Biology Marion Field Fass developed and has taught the interdisciplinary course at Beloit, which examines the connections between food and culture, food and sustainability, and food and social justice, and looks at eating habits and their impacts on health and the global food supply. On Capitol Hill, she will present jointly with two of her students: Adama Loos-Diallo, a biology major from Portland, Ore., and Nicole Helregel, a history and international relations double major from St. Joseph, Ill.
Slow Food was first selected as a model course by the Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) organization for its linkage of science and civic issues. SENCER is a faculty development and science education reform program supported by the National Science Foundation. The Slow Food course was also honored at the SENCER Summer Symposium in Maine last summer. Teachers who developed these award-winning courses were invited to present at the Capitol Hill symposium and to testify to the importance of innovative science education during the congressional panel.
The class, which examines the impacts of food choices within the framework of the slow food movement, has been offered at Beloit in 2005 and 2007 through the college’s First-Year Initiatives program. In addition to earning outside recognition, the course has influenced Beloit College students to take action on campus. This summer, for example, first-year student Elizabeth Makarewicz, ( Sedalia, Mo.) will intern with a Slow Food chapter in Portland, Ore., as a result of the course. Along with fellow first-year student Drew Clark ( Ann Arbor, Mich.), who will work on an organic farm in Germany this summer, Makarewicz is co-founding a Slow Food chapter at Beloit College this fall.
SENCER is the signature program of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement, a research center affiliated with Harrisburg ( Penn.) University of Science and Technology. SENCER programs engage students in science and mathematics by focusing coursework on real-world problems in a method that extends student learning across the curriculum to the broader community and society. Colleges and universities using the SENCER approach have had measurable success in increasing the interest and science literacy rates of students, especially among women and non-science majors. Fass has served on the faculty of SENCER’s summer workshops and is co-director of the organization’s new Midwest Regional Center for Innovation.
The Washington Symposium and Capitol Hill Poster Session is an annual gathering of invited educators, administrators and students with mature SENCER projects who discuss next steps in improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and present their own successful course revisions and developments to congressional delegations and other interested parties. Participants will meet with members of their congressional delegations during the morning of April 15th prior to the poster session. This year, representatives of 27 colleges and universities will participate in the event.