Dear fellow plant biologists,
Would you be interested in an "Education" minisymposium at the ASPB
meeting this year? I asked the Chair of the program committee if this
would be possible. He said that the program committee would be very
receptive to this, IF they saw enough education abstracts to warrant
a minisymposium. (His full reply is pasted below).
I think it would be great if we could convince the program committee
to offer an education minisymposium by all submitting education
abstracts. I have spoken to many of you about the creative and
innovative ideas you have used in your laboratories, classrooms and
research, and I know that most of you have great ideas to share. At
best, the effort would succeed and we would have an education
minisymposium. We would at least increase the number of education
posters to make them more of a presence at the meeting. (I have
already decided to try to highlight traffic through the education
posters by making a handout available at the Education Booth with
Education poster abstracts. If you have other suggestions to enhance
the visibility of the Education posters let me know!).
There are so many innovative ideas that don't get effectively
disseminated, and the ASPB meeting is a wonderful place to share
those ideas. You can list education posters as "dissemination"
efforts on your CV and your grant project reports. Remember, each
ASPB member can contribute only one research poster, but also can
submit an education poster, so it's not an either/or situation (and
it doesn't cost extra to have two posters). Education is a very broad
category that can include undergraduate education, K-12 outreach, and
efforts that target the general public. Posters can highlight ways
you've adapted your research into a course, or novel tools you've
developed to assess learning - the possibilities are endless!
The abstract submission deadline for minisymposium consideration is Feb 28.
Whether or not this "works", I look forward to seeing you at the ASPB
meeting.
Sincerely,
Mary E. Williams
ASPB Education Committee
Associate Professor of Biology
Harvey Mudd College
301 E. 12th St.
Claremont, CA 91711
At 9:43 PM -0600 2/2/05, Edgar P. Spalding wrote:
>Dear Mary,
>>We construct the minisymposia from the submitted abstracts - the
>topics and contents will be determined by the Program Committee in
>March after we pore over the 900 or so submissions. Each year we
>have education as one of the abstract submission categories with
>hopes that enough good abstracts to support a minisymposium will be
>submitted. I have been through the process from start to finish only
>once but I understand previous years have been similar - too
>few abstracts suitable for building an education minisymposium are
>received. One way to get this topic more exposure in the program
>(and I would be very glad if it happened) would be to encourage
>colleagues who are doing high quality, innovative educational
>activities to submit abstracts on the topic. I can promise you that
>the education category will get the attention it deserves when the
>abstracts are reviewed. There is time - the deadline is the end of
>February. And there is next year.
>>Yours truly,
>>Edgar
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