Expanding, enriching and sustaining undergraduate neuroscience education.

This issue of the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience (JUNE) marks the inauguration of a new expanded focus in our media review section. Through the development of cooperative agreements with numerous publishers, we will examine a great deal more neuroscience-relevant writing for its potential use in enriching undergraduate neuroscience education. Interested readers of JUNE should know that not only is the editorial board collectively involved in sustaining this effort to expand our book and media reviews; but that they, too, can be a part of JUNE’s media review team by contacting JUNE at moc.liamg@LANRUOJNUFENUJ to inquire about available titles. In this issue, we have reviews contributed by Kalat (DeHaene’s Conciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes our Thoughts) and Monuszko (Corkin’s Permanent Present Tense: the Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H.M.) and ten very different laboratory experiences and instruction technique articles to enrich the neuroscience curriculum. Kurczek and Johnson discuss the ways that collaborative learning can enhance outcomes in advanced seminars; while Greenwald and Quitadamo examine the use of inquiry-based pedagogy to enrich a neuroanatomy course. Shyam Diwakar, lead author of a group of coauthors (Editor’s disclosure: I am among that group of coauthors) gives details on an extensive virtual laboratory development that seeks to provide a sustainable solution for the educational divides that geography and economic considerations of countries such as India present to gaining laboratory experience. Mirrione et al. provide us with a positron emission tomography exercise for the undergraduate laboratory, Schettino brings a set of graphical computer simulations to the aid of undergraduate and pre-collegiate neuroscience instruction, and Raphail et al. discuss easy-to-implement classroom demonstrations of a variety of eye disease visual effects. In the teaching laboratory, Li, Wagner and Porter explore the use of Xenopus tadpoles for instruction in behavioral observations, and Inam et al. give us spike sorting procedures to analyze responding in the crayfish ventral superficial flexor preparation. Metzger revisits a class investigation of attitudes toward animal research, and Willard and Brasier outline a literature-based course for first year undergraduates. Collectively, these articles span a wide range of classroom, laboratory, and online approaches to help sustain the delivery of neuroscience curricula. This issue also marks a milestone in the history of the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, as I reluctantly accept the first retirement of an Editorial Board Member. Many people played a role in the development of both the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience and its flagship journal, the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education. Few have played as central a role as Carol Ann Paul, now retired from Wellesley College, and with this issue, our board. Over the history of the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, Carol Ann has been a thoughtful and generous contributor who enriched so many of FUN’s efforts. From reviewing manuscripts, to editing newsletters, to serving on committees, Carol Ann Paul has truly been a FUN Fellow. On behalf of all of us at JUNE, many thanks, Carol Ann. I also want to take this opportunity to remind readers that the FUN Committee on Education and its workshops program share with JUNE a mission dedicated to promoting best practices in the undergraduate neuroscience curricula. With the end of a long, cold winter now seeming to be actually possible, it’s nice to think that this summer our gracious hosts at Ithaca College and Cornell University will open their laboratory and classroom doors for the 2014 FUN Workshop: Undergraduate Neuroscience Education: Challenges and Solutions in Creating and Sustaining Programs, a weekend workshop packed with dedicated sessions to aid in sustaining, enriching and expanding all aspects of neuroscience education. And once again, the FUN workshop will be preceded by a separate intensive laboratory seminar that will bootstrap its participants in the execution of a variety of research techniques. Consider attending this once-every-three-years event. The FUN workshop and the intensive pre-workshop satellite seminar stand alongside JUNE in support of the FUN mission to provide faculty teaching in undergraduate neuroscience programs with both effective, economical resources and a dedicated, supportive community. I encourage all JUNE readers to visit the workshop website at http://www.ithaca.edu/eventservices/fw/ or to contact one of the members of the Workshop Planning Subcommittee of the FUN Committee on Education -- Jean Hardwick of Ithaca College, Bruce Johnson of Cornell University, Julio Ramirez of Davidson College, or myself at Macalester College for more details on how the FUN workshop, like JUNE, will serve to expand, enrich, and sustain your own courses and program.