National Center for Science Education

"Bringing Darwin Back," published (subscription required) in the August 2018 issue of Scientific American, discusses efforts to improve evolution education in the American science classroom — and NCSE is featured.

Adnan Oktar, the controversial Islamic creationist who publishes under the name Harun Yahya, was arrested by Turkish police on July 11, 2018, according to the Hurriyet Daily News (July 11, 2018).

"Concerned that environmental groups were winning the hearts and minds of Texas schoolchildren — filling their heads with statements of the ills of fossil fuels — a politically connected Texas natural gas industry advocacy group devised a plan to fight back," reported the Austin American-Statesman (July 6, 2018).

NCSE is pleased to welcome Kate Carter, NCSE's new Director of Community Science Education. Carter comes to NCSE from Harvard University, where she earned her Ph.D. in human evolutionary biology and taught human evolutionary biology.

NCSE is pleased to announce that the latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education is now available on-line. The issue — volume 38, number 3 — is the eleventh issue in the newsletter's new, streamlined, and full-color format.

NCSE's executive director Ann Reid appeared on Your Call, a daily radio show on San Francisco's KALW, on June 25, 2018, to discuss climate change education.

We welcomed our first eight NCSEteach Teacher Ambassadors in February through the Turning Misinformation into Educational Opportunities (TMEO) Workshop at George Mason University. This group of teachers developed a unit of 5 hands-on lessons on climate change and field tested them throughout this past semester.

We've chosen 10 amazing teachers to participate in the NCSEteach Teacher Ambassador Program Workshop for Evolution at Georgia Southern University in July. This is the second workshop conducted through our Teacher Ambassador Program (TAP), and the first focused exclusively on evolution.

"The Collier County School Board voted 3-2 on Monday [June 18, 2018] to adopt a new batch of science textbooks after residents filed objections to more than a dozen of them," according to the Naples Daily News (June 19, 2018).

Half of the members of Michigan's state board of education would oppose the new proposed state social studies standards, which were revised to downplay climate change among other topics, according to a report from Bridge magazine (June 14, 2018). 

The Colorado state board of education voted to adopt a new set of state science standards on June 13, 2018, despite opposition from members of the board who "disliked the way the standards treated climate change as a real phenomenon," according to Chalkbeat (June 14, 2018).

References to climate change, among other topics, have been removed from a draft of Michigan's new proposed social studies standards by "a cadre of conservatives," according to a report from Bridge magazine (June 12, 2018). 

Senate Concurrent Resolution 17 (PDF), introduced in the Louisiana Senate on May 29, 2018, would, if passed, have commended a former state senator "on his support and endorsement of teaching creationism in public schools."

One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn is that facts are not all powerful. As a scientist, I love facts. A paleontologist tells me that there is a 365-million-year-old fishlike thing with eight fingers that is an ancient cousin to tetrapods? Amazing! Where can we find more like it?

NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friend of Darwin award for 2018: Tiffany Adrain, the collections manager at the University of Iowa Paleontology Repository and a supporter of NCSE’s Science Booster Clubs in Iowa, and Robert Stephens, a cell and molecular biologist who proposed the idea of Darwin Day in 1993 and cofounded the Darwin Day Program to coordinate and encourage the celebrations of the great naturalist's life and work.

NCSE conferred its Friend of Darwin award for 2018 upon two people—Robert Stephens and Tiffany Adrain—who have significantly contributed to efforts to increase the public’s understanding and appreciation of evolutionary biology in informal educational settings.

Robert Stephens, Molecular Biologist

Each year, NCSE awards its Friend of the Planet award to individuals or organizations who have significantly contributed to efforts to increase the public’s understanding and appreciation of the science of climate change. This year’s winners have worked tirelessly to give the public the tools it needs to understand what scientists know about climate change and how they know it. 

"Some private schools in Florida that rely on public funding teach students that dinosaurs and humans lived together," reports the Orlando Sentinel (June 1, 2018). 

NCSE bids farewell to Emily Schoerning, who joined NCSE as its first Director of Community Organizing and Research in 2015. A microbiologist by training, Schoerning brought to NCSE a passion for science education and outreach that she found while a post-doctoral researcher.

"Evolution should remain part of the science standards for Arizona public high schools, despite what is being proposed by the state's top school official, Gov. Doug Ducey [R] said Monday [May 28, 2018]", the Arizona Daily Star (May 28, 2018) reported.