First Timers' Impressions

Pam Connerly
Indiana University East
Richmond, IN

pconnerl@indiana.edu

Mike Martin
John Carroll University
University Heights, OH

mmartin@jcu.edu

I stumbled across ABLE while frantically searching for lab exercises for my Cell Biology and Genetics courses during my first year of full-time teaching at Indiana University East, a small branch campus of Indiana University, located in Richmond, Indiana. I found several interesting, thoroughly described lab procedures in the archives of the ABLE website that I was able to successfully incorporate into my courses. I was curious about the organization and felt slightly guilty for swiping so many good lab ideas. When I noticed that the 2006 annual meeting was in nearby West Lafayette, I signed up and started trying to think of something I could present as a poster at the meeting.

As I drove across Indiana, I thought about what might happen at the meeting. I expected that I would have good conversations about biology, but instead I found people with whom I could talk about biology, teaching, research, and life as if I had already known these people for years. I expected that I would learn about a few new lab exercises and teaching techniques, but instead I came home with a binder stuffed full of labs and teaching ideas plus five strains of C. elegans and a bottle of bean beetles whose descendants are soon to become test subjects in my introductory biology course. I expected to find other professors at teaching-centered institutions, but instead I found a huge variety of people interested in undergraduate education including those folks and introductory biology lab coordinators, lab instructors, professors and graduate students at large research-focused institutions, lecturers, lab directors, and more.

After I came home from the meeting and got my worms and beetles tucked away, I tried to explain the ABLE meeting to my friends and colleagues by telling them that it was like a meeting full of the folks who hang out at the education posters during larger subdiscipline-specific annual meetings - my kind of place. The meeting left me with an expanded resource for lab and teaching advice, a renewed sense of excitement about undergraduate education, and the 2007 meeting already scheduled on my calendar. Now I just need to develop a new lab idea of my own so I'll have something to present!

I decided to come to the ABLE conference at Purdue after discussing opportunities to present a laboratory exercise that I had recently developed. Our Introductory Biology lab coordinator (Sandy Buckles) suggested ABLE. I must say that I am happy that I attended because it gave me an opportunity to discuss teaching with people who have a real passion for it, and I anticipate that I will attend in future summers.

I was hoping to get a good lab exercise or two out of the conference, and I definitely got them. The bioinformatics field can be overwhelming due to the information explosion in the last decade. Our students don't have a real appreciation of the information and uses for bioinformatics (as a side note, students claim to be less computer-savvy which continues to be a surprise to me. If Xbox would only make a bioinformatics game...). I am hoping to convince Sandy to put one web-based exercise in the Intro lab, and I am going to redesign the bioinformatics section of the upper-level course that I teach.

I didn't dislike anything about the meeting, though I was extremely disappointed to find that I missed out on going to Las Vegas by a couple of years! Sadly, I missed an opportunity to get practical use out of my genetics probability trainer (i.e. a deck of cards). At future ABLE conferences, I would be interested in seeing some creative pre-lab or classroom lecture course presentations that students find enjoyable and informative. See you next summer!