CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The president of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Bruce M. Alberts, will discuss "Science Education as a Wedge for Revitalizing our Nation's Schools" at 4pm on May 31 at the Museum of Science Cahners Theater.
His talk, the latest presentation in the Forum on Public Education, will touch on topics of concern to everyone with a stake in education--teachers, students, parents, professors, admissions officers, employers. The forum, a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Council on Primary and Secondary Education and the Museum of Science, seeks to bring the public together with local and national education leaders.
Dr. Alberts, a biochemist widely noted for his study of the protein complexes that allow a living cell to replicate chromosomes during cell division, is a graduate of Harvard and was chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California-San Francisco before taking on the leadership of the NAS.
"Bruce Alberts has a long-standing personal commitment to science teaching at the K-12 level and is an eloquent champion of the recently released NAS National Science Education Standards," said Dr. David Ellis, president of the Museum of Science. "We are delighted to host the Forum and NAS President Alberts at the Museum of Science."
Professor Ronald M. Latanision of MIT, a co-principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-sponsored PALMS (Partnerships Advancing the Learning of Mathematics and Science), said the NAS's "Science Education Standards serve as the basis for the Massachusetts Science and Technology Curriculum Frameworks, which are being introduced throughout the Commonwealth." He said that the new standards and frameworks "affect the way that science teaching and learning will occur in the future and the implications for student assessment--the university admissions process, for example--are pertinent not only to teachers and students, but to parents and the community, broadly." Professor Latanision is chairman of the MIT Council on Primary and Secondary Education.
