This article examines the intersection of environmental justice and undergraduate chemistry education through a review of existing publications that highlight successful strategies for chemistry educators interested in incorporating environmental justice into their classrooms. It emphasizes the key roles of racial and social justice in the…

As strong proponents of problem-based learning (PBL), the authors designed and taught an interdisciplinary, team-taught PBL course on Writing Science for the Public at a midsize northeastern state university. This approach led to emphasizing collaboration and experiential learning and resulted in media-rich student projects.

Interdisciplinary approaches to research in the sciences have become increasingly important in solving a wide range of pressing problems at both global and local levels. It is imperative then that science majors in higher education understand the need for exploring information from a wide array of disciplines. With this in mind, interdisciplinary…

Taste perception was the focus of an undergraduate course in the health sciences that bridged the sciences and humanities. A problem-based learning approach was used to study the biological issues, whereas the cultural transmutations of these molecular mechanisms were explored using a variety of resources (novels, cookbooks, and films). Multiple…

Following collaboration between two chemistry lecturers and an academic developer an attempt was made to enhance the learning of students within a chemistry module through the adaptation of the delivery of content material. This paper reports a piece of practitioner led research which considered how effective the approach developed was upon the…

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…

While the great scientists of the past recognized a need for a multidisciplinary approach, today's schools often treat math and science as subjects separate from the rest. This not only creates a disinterest among students, but also a potential learning gap once students reach college and then graduate into the workforce. "Cases on…

This paper discusses the development of concept maps for an entire veterinary curriculum, for each of the planned courses, and for each of the case-based exercises in each course, drawing on current efforts at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) to develop an integrated curriculum for use in a problem-based…

In its use of complex, real-world problems to introduce concepts and motivate learning in an active and cooperative learning environment, problem-based learning is a powerful alternative to the passive lecture in introductory college science. Use of technology and multimedia instruction, focus on large classes, and use of interdisciplinary…