MSC03 2020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
Physical Location:
CERIA Building
Room 204
Phone: (505) 277-1358
Fax: (505) 277-1351
cookjose@unm.edu
AIM-UP! is an NSF-funded Research Coordination Network for the funding period of May 2010 to April 2015. It explores the use of natural history collections in undergraduate education.
Demonstrating the value of holistic research strategies that link specimens, associated geographic and ecologic information, and biodiversity informatics to address how biotic communities vary through space and time.
Incorporating art and museums so students can explore multiple aspects of geographic variation among organisms and relate that variation to potentially causal evolutionary processes.
Exploring the extensive modern and historical genetic data sets available through our collections to compare patterns of genomic variation within and among evolutionary lineages.
Examining historical relationships between climate change and biotic diversity utilizing extensive natural history collections and datasets.
Utilizing an integrated, museum-based approach to characterize interactions and impacts of the natural world on humans and their pathogens.
AIM-UP! is developing modules that use museums and specimen-associated data for use in undergraduate education.
Each of the five years of the project has a different theme :
AIM-UP! is refining existing efforts and developing new integrated approaches to collections-based training in large-scale questions using the expertise of educators, curators, collection managers, database managers, and scientists whose work spans disciplines and relates topics covering a spectrum of time and space.
The network is:
Network participants communicate through 1) an annual three-day all-hands working meeting at field stations and participating institutions; 2) workshops at scientific meetings, such as the Natural Science Collections Alliance; 3) frequent interaction via interactive internet services (e.g., video conferencing, AIM-UP! blog, ARCTOS blog); 4) short-term exchanges of museum educators for intensive content development; 5) a short course (two weeks) for undergraduate students at 1 host institution to beta-test new approaches, and 6) a fall semester seminar course at the University of New Mexico (available via webcasting to all network participants). While AIM-UP! began as a collaboration between the University of Alaska, Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of New Mexico as a way to integrate expertise and data across these institutions, it is already expanded to other universities, federal agencies, and a large museum-based genetic consortium in Canada.