Confluence: Where life and science meet

Background/Question/Methods

In May 2011 the QBIC (Quantifying Biology In the Classroom) Program (http://qbic.fiu.edu) at Florida International University (FIU), embarked on a seminar series targeting undergraduates called ‘Confluence: Where life and science meet’. The inspiration for this series came primarily from the reality that most of our biology undergraduates (~1200) declare themselves as premedical students. We view this uneven distribution of career choice as a consequence of the fact that at the K-12 level, students are not made properly aware of the variety of career pathways they can follow in science. We feel therefore it is our responsibility to expose our students to the individuals who have been successful in non-medical fields, both to provide the students examples and information on what the pathway to those fields are like, and also for students to hopefully see in the stories of these individuals how they themselves can become professionals in this way.

Confluence comprises two parts. Firstly, the speaker gives a seminar to a primarily (over 95%, ~130 total) audience. This seminar is a little less technical than what said speaker may present at a scientific meeting or a similar scenario with his/her peers. The seminar is a mix of their personal life, the story of the science that they practice, some interesting discoveries, and the events that led them to follow this career and ask the kind of scientific questions they do. This is then followed by an interview with a QBIC faculty member in front of a smaller student-only audience (~15), where, in conversation, the speaker goes into more detail about some of the themes of his/her talk. The conversation is begun by the interviewer, but by mid-interview is driven mainly by questions from the student audience. The interview is videotaped and made available for public viewing at http://qbic.fiu.edu/confluence. 

Results/Conclusions

Audience evaluations indicate a 96% excellent rating with students citing this experience as their first awareness of the possibility of research careers. In a mini focus group with an unbiased mediator, students specifically comment on how inspired they were by the stories of these individuals, and how connected they felt to the speakers’ struggles during undergraduate years. In this presentation I will speak about the development, implementation and results of the Confluence series, highlighting our successes thus far, and discuss new directions for the future.