“Active learning should be the central dogma of science education”. A growing body of data supports the conclusion that active learning does indeed trump the traditional lecture, both in terms of student retention and student performance. Recent efforts at the Colorado School of Mines to integrate biology into our engineering curriculum have led to a revised foundational biology course that has rigor and relevance for our engineering students. The move from traditional lecture to an active learning environment was key to our efforts to engage our students and improve how much and how well our students learn the basics of biology. Our course re-design involved a 3-pronged approach in which we: (1) renovated a classroom to create a studio environment with wet-lab capability; (2) implemented a constructivist pedagogy and (3) designed a training program to develop graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who could support a student-centered learning experience. We affirm that change is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. However, the positive impact of these changes has been apparent from the beginning and as we continue to change the culture at our institution. Our new studio biology classroom and course have helped our campus move forward with the implementation of innovative pedagogy and creative new learning spaces. In this essay, we offer a description of this course transformation and several lessons learned from the process. We hope that our experiences can help others in their efforts to achieve more effective teaching and learning in biology.
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