Northwest Biology Instructor's Organization

Draft Schedule including keynote speakers

Friday 4/27/12

Afternoon (tentative)
COSEE workshop at Shannon Point Marine Station (separate registration)
(J. Appel and C. Gehrke)

4:30 – 7:30 PM

Registration, Publishers and Vendors, light buffet dinner

7:30 PM

Welcome and Announcements (F. Schwartz)

Approx. 7:50 PM

Scott Freeman (UW)
Topic: Closing the gap: Evidence-based learning in introductory biology

If we bring the same level of rigor to our teaching as our research, then we should design our courses based on data. We have been working to evaluate the impact of "highly structured" course designs--where students are required to prepare for class sessions that focus on intensive active learning exercises, followed by weekly practice exams--on student performance in an introductory biology course for majors. In the process, we've addressed questions about course interventions that have a disproportionate benefit for high-achieving students and for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and developed approaches for evaluating the equivalence of students and assessments when comparing measures of achievement.

Saturday 4/28/12

8-8:30 Buffet breakfast

8:30 – 12:00 Concurrent Workshops, Publishers and Vendors

12:00 – 12:30 Box lunches

12:30 – 5:00 Field Trips

5:30 – 6:30 Social Hour and Bar at the Everett Marina

6:30 PM Banquet at the Everett Marina

7:15 PM Announcements and Door Prizes

approx. 7:45 PM

Matt Kaberlein (UW)
Topic: The Biology of Aging

Everyone gets old, but we don’t all age equally. What distinguishes those who age well from those who don’t? Why do we age at all? Is there anything we can do about it? These are the questions we are trying to answer in the Kaeberlein Lab. Here I will present an overview of the Biology of Aging and the potential impact that studies in this area may have on society. Over the past few decades we have learned much about the genetic and environmental factors that modulate the rate of aging in laboratory animals. Drugs have been developed that target these factors and appear to slow aging in the lab. In 2012, these discoveries are just beginning to be translated to humans. Will they work? And if they do, what will the future look like?

Sunday 4/29/12

8:00-9:00 Buffet breakfast and NWBIO Business meeting

9:15 – 11:30 Concurrent workshops and discipline discussions

Scott Freeman teaches and conducts research on the impact of active learning techniques on student performance in large biology courses. Since the mid-1990s, Freeman has focused on teaching an introductory biology series for UW majors and authored the book Biological Science (4th edition) for use in in those courses. He also co-authored a book written for upper-division courses titled Evolutionary Analysis. Freeman grew up in Wisconsin and received a B.A. in Biology from Carleton College in 1978. He received his PhD in zoology from the University of Washington in 1991. A Sloan Fellowship in molecular evolution supported his post-doc at the Biology Department at Princeton University, after which he returned to the University of Washington as Director of Public Programs at the Burke Museum.

Matt Kaeberlein was born and raised in Seattle. He attended Seattle Lutheran High School in West Seattle, and did his undergraduate studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where he graduated with a B.S. in Biochemistry and a B.A. in Mathematics in 1997. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002 and did his post-doctoral studies in the Department of Genome Science at the University of Washington from 2003-2006. Dr. Kaeberlein was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology in 2006 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. Research in the Kaeberlein Lab (www.kaeberleinlab.org) is centered on understanding the genetic and environmental factors that modulate aging.

Dr. Kaeberlein has coauthored more than 85 publications in top scientific journals, and he has been recognized with several prestigious awards including a Breakthroughs in Gerontology Award from the Glenn Foundation and the American Federation for Aging Research in 2007, selection as an Alzheimer’s Association New Investigator and an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging in 2008, Undergraduate Research Mentor and Science in Medicine Lecture Awards from the University of Washington in 2009, and the Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star in Aging Research Award from the American Federation for Aging Research and selection as a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America in 2011. In addition to his primary appointment, Dr. Kaeberlein is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Biochemistry at Guangdong Medical College in Dongguan, China, the Co-Director of the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, and in 2011 became the founding Director of the Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute at the University of Washington.

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