SENCER Brain Caucus Forum

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Greetings
Name: Paul Grobstein
Date: 08/11/2005 16:53
Link to this Comment: 15880

Welcome to an on-line forum area for continuing our conversations in the Brain caucus at the 2005 SENCER Summer Institute. Glad you're here, looking forward to seeing what we can make together.

A few of the reasons to take seriously the brain as a SENCER course initiative as I recall them from our meeting in San Jose:

fundamentally interdisciplinary
directly relevant to education
connects to a variety of public social and cultural issues
can help to change ways people look at themselves and the world
can help to illustrate strengths and limits of science at any given time

And a few things on Serendip that might be relevant

Brain and Behavior, a resource list
Neurobiology and Behavior, an undergraduate course
Brain and Behavior: Implications for Education, a workshop for K12 teachers

Add your thoughts about a SENCER initiative in this area. And resources you know of that might be useful/relevant. And ... whatever else you think might keep the ball rolling. If you know of others who might be interested, by all means invite them to join in as well. Let's see whether we can use our initial enthusiasm to make something concrete/useful here by sharing our ideas, interests, and expertise.

Behavioral and Neural Genetics
Name: Terry R. M
Date: 08/21/2005 07:41
Link to this Comment: 15914

I couldn't come to this caucus because I was running one of my own at SENCER 2005. It is obvious that SENCER will have to empahsize courses for majors as well as non majors to be renewed. My last course to be SENCERized was Behavioral and Neural Genetics which I taught at Rutgers in Spring 2005. I used current event as an attention getter at the start of each class but during the semester I had students read the research papers for those current events and structured group work around the research behind those current events. The brain, or brain and behavior etc are perfect courses to introduce SENCER style activities.

I am looking forward to the forum.