Improving science education is not just important to me as the editor in chief of a science magazine for the usual reasons of maintaining our country’s well-being and global competitiveness: It’s also very personal. I have two school-age daughters myself—and they think science is cool. So when I got the top editor’s job at Scientific [...]

Earlier this semester I talked about a few new kinds of assignments I was trying out in my evolutionary medicine class. I’ve got my students posting on the readings every week at the group blog, and there have been several great interactions. For instance, here is a thoughtful comment on one student’s post: “…I have [...]

I’ve been teaching a 200-level evolutionary medicine course at my university for four years. Each year I try something a little different to give students more ways to express themselves and to demonstrate their understanding of the material. But these changes have always been within the realm of assignments they and I can easily recognize [...]

Earlier this week, the Women in Science group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign convened a panel on using social media to promote science. Melanie Tannenbaum, Bill Hammack, Joanne Manaster and I were the panelists, and Jo Holley was the organizer. There were a few things that I found interesting about our varying responses as [...]

Posters are one of the first ways junior scientists learn to communicate information. In high school students use those three-part poster boards for science fairs. In undergrad research symposia and beyond, scientists make a single flat poster, the dimensions varying by the conference but usually in a horizontal layout. The research poster is how much [...]

I have been traveling and speaking a lot this semester, perhaps too much. Because we’ve both had so many traveling commitments this year, for the last month I’ve hardly seen my husband, because he’s away one week and I’m away the next. But a few of my speaking engagements have been on campus, which certainly [...]

Between managing a class of 750 and desperately trying to organize some old data into something analyzeable (yes, I just made up that word), I have not been able to work on a post I really want to write on the history of the study of menstruation. I should be able to get it up [...]

Last week, I polled my readers to find out what they thought were the best ways to reach non-science majors to get them to appreciate, even fall in love with, science. Here are a few things they had to say: From Momma, PhD: To be successful in a 100-level course, you have to be prepared [...]

This fall I teach Anth 143: Biology of human behavior for the fourth time here at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The difference is that most of the time I will be teaching I will be behind a computer or camera lens. Undergraduates will lead in-person sections designed to help students gain the skills they [...]

I am starting to incorporate video in my large enrollment course for the fall, Anth 143: Biology and Human Behavior (more on that another time, and yes, I will share at least some of them with you). The video expert on campus that I met with today pointed me to this talk by Theo Gray [...]

“I have an idea,” my brother said to me last winter. Jacob is an elementary science teacher at a neighborhood charter school in Northeast Philadelphia and, at the time, I was working as a lab technician in the same city. “How would you like to come into my classroom and talk to my students about [...]

Sugata Mitra gave street kids in a slum in New Delhi access to a computer connected to the Internet, and found that they quickly taught themselves how to use it. This was the moment he says he discovered a new way of teaching. He calls it the grandmother technique, and it goes like this: expose [...]

Editor’s note: The below is a response to a critique of MindUP, a social and emotional learning program pioneered by actor Goldie Hawn. I have covered this program in other blogs (see list below) and in a feature in Scientific American Mind (visit “Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control”). I hope this [...]

Editor’s note: The following is a critique of a social and emotional learning program called MindUP that I have covered in other blogs (see list below) and in a feature in Scientific American Mind (visit “Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control”).  Please also read a response to this critique, posted separately, from [...]

Mindfulness, the practice of being present and in the moment, is easier for some people than for others. But it is a skill that many believe is worth cultivating—some say, starting with children. Preventing your mind from taking you into the past or future can, after all, be an antidote to depression (which can result [...]

Longtime science blog readers will certainly remember the popular cognitive psychology blog Cognitive Daily, written by Greta and Dave Munger, that had a fantastic five-year run at Scienceblogs. While Dave is still involved in the science blogging community through projects like Research Blogging and Science Seeker, and of course writing his own blogs, Greta has [...]

[Data collection fortnight ends today. And then we shall return to our regularly scheduled programming. Until then, here's Rule #1, from the archives.] If you are giving a talk, or teaching a class, or are otherwise responsible for transmitting content from your brain to other peoples’ brains, you should be able to give that talk [...]

Here’s what we now know. Kiera Wilmot was re-creating the Drano Aluminum foil experiment at school. She was outside, before the morning bell. She recreated one of those Wow! Science experiments, the kind we see on Myth Busters or You’ve Been Warned! Folks love those shows. They love doing that crazy stuff at home (although [...]

News of Kiera Wilmot’s arrest has seriously unnerved me. She is the Florida high school student who was experimenting with common household chemicals in science class that resulted in a minor explosion. There were no injuries and no damage to school property; however, she was taken away in handcuffs, formally arrested and expelled from school. [...]

Hip Hop Education is taking over the world. My brother in science and hip hop Dr. Chris Emdin and The GZA of Wu-Tang have rolled out an amazing science education and engagement platform: Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S.  High School students create rhymes and battle each other to demonstrate not only their MC prowess but science comprehension [...]

A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore– And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over– like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does [...]

So even after Affirmative Action, there still weren’t very many Blacks and Mexican students enrolled in selective colleges and universities. Why? Because they didn’t meet the entry standards. That makes sense. But what isn’t thoroughly addressed (in this clip) is the reason why. Professor Lino Graglia admits he is not exactly sure why idea why [...]

I received the great honor of being invited to speak at the Dr. Laura C. Harris Symposium at Denison University. It’s a small (compared to OK State) Liberal Arts College in Granville, Ohio – outside of Columbus. The Symposium is sponsored by the Women’s Studies Department, and has been inviting interesting speakers across the academic [...]

The Annual Philanthropic throw down of Science Bloggers is done and tally is in! Students WIN! Science Bloggers for Students raised $25,359 and 17,122 public school students were reached! Thanks to the kind and very generous support from our blog readers, 309 members plus the matching donations from other supporting DonorsChoose organizations such as the [...]

There was a lot of activity in the last hours of the Science Bloggers for Students campaign last night.  It was better than any election coverage you’ll watch tonight.  Thanks to your help The Urban Scientist Giving Page we raised $962 dollars and helped 453 students. I feel great. Thank you, thank you, thank you. [...]

Early today, I Skyped in and gave a quick presentation to University of Louisville BIO 263 Environmental Biolog students.  My friend and colleague Dr. Tommy Parker is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Urban Wildlife Research Lab. The course focuses on the relationships between humans and the environment. Topics include ecology, population biology, modifications [...]

Music was born in me.  Even before I realized it, music was my first language.  I loved listening to the radio and by the age of  I could change stations on our AM console stereo and change records on the player. I listened to what the adults listened to: Blues, R&B, folk, rock, pop, even [...]