Seminar

The EvoS Consortium: A New Movement in Higher Education


SpeakerDavid Wilson (Binghamton University)
Date10-Sep-2008
SummaryWednesday, 3:00 PM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551. For complex reasons, evolutionary theory was largely confined to the biological sciences and avoided for most human-related subjects for most of the 20th century. That is now rapidly changing. Like water from a burst dam, evolutionary theory is spreading into virtually every human-related subject, including the humanities in addition to the human-related sciences. This is not fringe science (as often portrayed), but is being reported in the most rigorously peer-reviewed journals. Yet, it is not yet reflected in higher education, which still teaches evolution primarily as a biological subject. EvoS (http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/) is the first program that attempts to solve this problem at a campus-wide scale. Initiated at Binghamton University in 2003 and replicated at SUNY New Paltz in 2006, these two institutions have just received NSF funding to create a nationwide consortium of programs. I will discuss the EvoS consortium concept, how it can be coordinated with existing organizations dedicated to teaching evolution (such as NESCent and the National Center for Science Education), and how it can cut the Gordian knot of acceptance of evolution by the general public.
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