In recent years, scientific societies collectively and their member scientists individually have become increasingly active in all areas of science education, including pre-college and undergraduate science education, graduate and career issues, and public literacy. Dr. Bloodgood is a professor of Cell Biology at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center and a member of the CELS Steering Committee. He has also served as chair of ASCB's education committee. The efforts of some societies have been particularly effective, and this section of the CELS monograph will highlight a number of them. A survey of activities from a wide sampling of these organizations makes this answer clear.
Scientific societies do very different things, often operating independently and in isolation.
They often fail to evaluate the usefulness of the education initiatives they undertake and to widely disseminate information about the initiatives they have found to be successful. The fear is that scientific societies will be constantly reinventing the wheel as they venture into the arena of scientific education. This is an area where CELS is poised to play a major and much-needed role. Working through scientific societies, CELS may even be able to influence the reward system at colleges and universities. The following pages provide a representative sampling of some current efforts of scientific societies to influence the quality of undergraduate teaching in the biological sciences.