Promoting excellence in undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education at major research universities is necessary to ensure that we have the STEM-literate workforce ...and general population required to propel the nation forward into the twenty-first century and beyond. This essay provides a brief contextual history of the Association of American Universities’(AAU) effort to improve the effectiveness of undergraduate STEM education at member campuses and delineates the specific goals of this initiative. The essay then illuminates the essential role of the academic department and department chair in achieving long-lasting change and improving the quality of undergraduate education. It also discusses critical strategies and approaches for promoting the most effective methods for undergraduate STEM teaching and learning, with numerous examples from AAU member universities. The essay concludes with an acknowledgment of key challenges and opportunities that continue to face undergraduate education at research universities.
While conducting pilot studies into the usefulness of fusion to TELSAM polymers as a potential protein crystallization strategy, we observed novel properties in crystals of two TELSAM-target protein ...fusions, as follows. (i) A TELSAM-target protein fusion can crystallize more rapidly and with greater propensity than the same target protein alone. (ii) TELSAM-target protein fusions can be crystallized at low protein concentrations. This unprecedented observation suggests a route to crystallize proteins that can only be produced in microgram amounts. (iii) The TELSAM polymers themselves need not directly contact one another in the crystal lattice in order to form well-diffracting crystals. This novel observation is important because it suggests that TELSAM may be able to crystallize target proteins too large to allow direct inter-polymer contacts. (iv) Flexible TELSAM-target protein linkers can allow target proteins to find productive binding modes against the TELSAM polymer. (v) TELSAM polymers can adjust their helical rise to allow fused target proteins to make productive crystal contacts. (vi). Fusion to TELSAM polymers can stabilize weak inter-target protein crystal contacts. We report features of these TELSAM-target protein crystal structures and outline future work needed to validate TELSAM as a crystallization chaperone and determine best practices for its use.
Recent calls for improvement in undergraduate education within STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines are hampered by the methods used to evaluate teaching ...effectiveness. Faculty members at research universities are commonly assessed and promoted mainly on the basis of research success. To improve the quality of undergraduate teaching across all disciplines, not only STEM fields, requires creating an environment wherein continuous improvement of teaching is valued, assessed, and rewarded at various stages of a faculty member's career. This requires consistent application of policies that reflect well-established best practices for evaluating teaching at the department, college, and university levels. Evidence shows most teaching evaluation practices do not reflect stated policies, even when the policies specifically espouse teaching as a value. Thus, alignment of practice to policy is a major barrier to establishing a culture in which teaching is valued. Situated in the context of current national efforts to improve undergraduate STEM education, including the Association of American Universities Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative, this essay discusses four guiding principles for aligning practice with stated priorities in formal policies: 1) enhancing the role of deans and chairs; 2) effectively using the hiring process; 3) improving communication; and 4) improving the understanding of teaching as a scholarly activity. In addition, three specific examples of efforts to improve the practice of evaluating teaching are presented as examples: (1) Three Bucket Model of merit review at the University of California, Irvine; (2) Evaluation of Teaching Rubric, University of Kansas; and (3) Teaching Quality Framework, University of Colorado, Boulder. These examples provide flexible criteria to holistically evaluate and improve the quality of teaching across the diverse institutions comprising modern higher education.
By granting universities and faculty the rights to retain intellectual property arising from federally sponsored research, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 provided critical motivation to universities and ...their faculty members to take an active role in commercializing technology based on their
discoveries. While many universities feel it is imperative that their technology transfer operations work to recover costs, and dwindling state funding for higher education has caused some state legislatures and university governing boards to view technology transfer as a potential revenue
source, we maintain that revenue generation, in most instances, is not the primary motivation for university technology commercialization. If done with the right goals in mind, technology transfer aligns with universities' overarching research, education, and service missions, helping to ensure
that public investment in science is impactful, that it advances broader economic development objectives, and that it serves the public interest. In 2015, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Association of American Universities (AAU) issued recommendations
to their members encouraging them to reaffirm their commitment to managing intellectual property in the public interest and calling for an unequivocal declaration by university leaders that technology transfer efforts serve first and foremost the best interests of society. This article relays
the recommendations put forth by the associations.
Reforming Regulation of Research Universities SMITH, TOBIN L.; TRAPANI, JOSH; DECRAPPEO, ANTHONY ...
Issues in science and technology,
07/2011, Letnik:
27, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
... the proportion funded by federal, state, and local governments decreased from 78.5% to 66%. Because of White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rules, universities are restricted in how ...much they can be reimbursed by the federal government to pay for compliance costs.
Human thirty-eight-negative kinase-1 (TNK1) is implicated in cancer progression. The TNK1 ubiquitin-associated (UBA) domain binds polyubiquitin and plays a regulatory role in TNK1 activity and ...stability. No experimentally determined molecular structure of this unusual UBA domain is available. We fused the UBA domain to the 1TEL variant of the translocation ETS leukemia protein sterile alpha motif (TELSAM) crystallization chaperone and obtained crystals diffracting as far as 1.53 Å. GG and GSGG linkers allowed the UBA to reproducibly find a productive binding mode against its host 1TEL polymer and crystallize at protein concentrations as low as 0.2 mg/mL. Our studies support a mechanism of 1TEL fusion crystallization and show that 1TEL fusion crystals require fewer crystal contacts than traditional protein crystals. Modeling and experimental validation suggest the UBA domain may be selective for both the length and linkages of polyubiquitin chains.
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