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General Biology Home |
The General Biology Program The General Biology Program for Teachers offers graduate-level courses and enrichment opportunities for biology teachers. The program was designed to address the needs of middle and high school biology teachers for graduate-level biology courses, taught at times when they could participate. Courses are offered at times when teachers can attend, during school vacations as well as on-line. Because the courses are graduate-level, they meet many school districts’ requirements for salary increment credit. Courses are divided into the following categories: School-year courses: Teachers may enroll in on-line courses during the Fall and/or Spring semesters through the AZ-START program. More information about upcoming online courses as well as application materials may be found at the AZ-START website. Summer courses: Summer provides teachers with more time to devote to their own continuing education. Our summer courses are two- or three-unit online or hybrid courses that emphasize either biology content or biology teaching. Many are core courses for our innovative master’s degree program. However, the courses are open to teachers who are not interested in pursuing a master’s degree through our non-degree program. Master’s degree in General Biology: This innovative master’s degree program takes place almost exclusively over the summers, so that teachers need to complete only minimal course work while they are teaching. Teachers in the master’s degree program take courses during the first summer of the program; during two subsequent summers, they do research under the supervision of University of Arizona biological sciences faculty. They write and defend a thesis, and create, classroom test, and disseminate to other teachers a lesson unit based on their research experiences. Applications to this program are due on March 1. Over 57 teachers have completed the M.S. in General Biology degree thus far. In the early years of the program, most of the participants lived in or near Tucson; however, in recent years, teachers have come from the entire State of Arizona as well as around the nation to take advantage of the summer courses. The widespread response indicates that the program does, indeed, meet an important need for biology teachers. The application materials for both the M.S. Program as well as the non-degree program are available online. If you are unable to download the materials, please fill out the online Request-A-Packet form.
Funding for this program is provided by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Science Foundation Arizona. Your comments are welcome and should be sent to warder@u.arizona.edu . The
University of Arizona
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics General Biology Program for Secondary Teachers warder@email.arizona.edu http://biology.arizona.edu/sciconn
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