BIORETS: Research Experiences for Teachers in the Biology of Plants, Animals, Microorganisms, and their Environments

The overarching goal of this BIORETS program at Western Michigan University is to provide middle and high school science teachers in Southwest Michigan with authentic research experience and transformative curricular improvement opportunities. This BIORETS site offers a 7-week summer research experience for 8 teachers each year. It is anticipated that a total of 24 science teachers will be trained in the program during the summers of 2025-2027. Teachers will conduct research centering on a unifying theme: how organisms interact with each other and their environments. The research experience will be complemented with faculty research seminars, professional development workshops, demonstrations of hands-on teaching modules, lunchtime discussions, written lesson plans, poster presentations, and classroom visits. The broader impacts of this BIORETS program include: (1) Inspire students' interests in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM); (2) Advance discovery and understanding in the biology of plants, animals, microorganisms and their environments; (3) Enhance infrastructure for research and education; (4) Disseminate curricular materials created during the BIORETS summer session to a wide audience. The hands-on research experience and complementary faculty research seminars of this program are expected to deepen teachers' research literacy and their knowledge in biological sciences. Teachers will also experience teamwork and experiments that lead to the generation of new research ideas and approaches. The research projects are designed to help teachers to gain a holistic understanding of the multifaceted interactions among living organisms and their environments. Components of these projects have been implemented in college and K-12 classrooms. Therefore, the teachers will not only leave with deeper understanding of the research topic and the scientific method but also with a set of practical teaching modules for their own classrooms. Faculty mentors, graduate students, and undergraduate students at WMU will work closely with teacher participants to translate their research experiences into curricular changes. Such changes will enrich teachers' classroom teaching practices and inspire a larger number of middle and high school students to consider higher education and careers in STEM, especially in biological sciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.