Stanford’s Bio 44Y course, in which Tad Fukami integrates an ecology curriculum into his research on Mimulus floral ecology based out of OBFS Member Station Jasper Ridge, has just won The Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI)!

IBI was been established to encourage innovation and excellence in education by recognizing outstanding, inquiry-based science and design-based engineering education modules. This type of education is a form of active learning wherein the instructor provides a question, or a challenge, and a general set of procedures that can be used to answer it. The students then produce an explanation or answer that is based on the evidence that they collect from appropriate resource materials or experimental processes that are, at least in part, of the students own proposal.

Building on one of the Fukami research group's projects, the course focuses on ecological interactions among a species of flowering plants, the hummingbirds and insects that pollinate the plants, and the microorganisms that inhabit the floral nectar of the plants and move from flower to flower by hitchhiking on pollinators.

Congrats to Jasper Ridge and Dr. Fukami!

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