Biological Sciences

• Dr. Graham Hatfull from Biological Sciences was awarded an HHMI Professorship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2002 to support innovation in the education of college students.
• As a result, Dr. Hatfull was instrumental in developing a discovery-based biology course for introductory students at University of Pittsburgh in which students discover, characterize and sequence the genome of phages.
• The course, called Science Education Alliance Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) was finalized in 2008 and has shown great success in engaging students in their own learning, getting them excited about science and, as a consequence, has led to improvements in student retention within STEM and has increased the number of students interested in participating in original research.
• The course has been since adopted/adapted by over 70 other universities across the country.
• Read about the success of this course in an article in mBio.
• More information about the success of the SEA-PHAGES course:
  • Dr. Hatfull led a discussion about the SEA-PHAGE program at a dB-SERC lunch on November 24. You can get his presentation and a discussion summary on our What We Do - Journal Club page.
  • Chronicle of Higher Education Article.
  • mBio article.
  • Pitt news article.
  • Dr. Hatfull's lab website.
    • Follow the link "HHMI project in phage discovery" at the bottom.
• There is now a national database of nearly 5000 phages to which new ones are periodically added.

Improving Biology Education at Pitt through the Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) Program

• Dr. Sam Donovan from Biological Sciences is one of the principal investigators for this program
• Him and his colleagues at University of Wisconsin-Madison and at the College of William and Mary have recently been awarded a $2.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish this program
• The primary goals of the QUBES program are to:
  • Coordinate the efforts and resources of disparate communities invested in promoting quantitative biology education;
  • Support faculty understanding and implementation of specific quantitative biology concepts and teaching approaches;
  • Increase the visibility, utility, and adoption of existing quantitative biology materials and the capacity for peer educator interaction;
  • Quantify and track faculty contribution to quantitative biology education scholarship; and,
  • Study and Disseminate the features of QUBES that increase implementation success.
• For more information about this exciting program, visit the QUBES hub.
• Read about the QUBES program in Pitt Chronicle

Inquiry-Based Introductory Biology labs

• Dr. Jean Schmidt and Dr. Elia Crisucci have been working in redesigning the Fundamentals of Biology laboratory courses toward an inquiry-based model. They discussed their approach in detail at a dB-SERC pizza lunch.
• More information on the Events-Journal Club page.
• In addition, Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Crisucci are closely working with Yale's Center for Scientific Teaching and were partners in the Small World Initiative pilot to develop a discovery-based lab course which engages students in antibiotic discovery from soil microbes.