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AIM-UP!

MSC03 2020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131

Physical Location:
CERIA Building
Room 204

Phone: (505) 277-1358
Fax: (505) 277-1351

Advancing Integration of Museums into Undergraduate Programs

About AIM-UP!

About AIM-UP!

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.

Year 1 - Integrative Inventories: Complex Biotic Associations Across Space and Time

Year 1 - Integrative Inventories: Complex Biotic Associations Across Space and Time

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.

Year 2 - Geographic Variation, CO-EVOLUTION: Art + Biology in the Museum.

Year 2 - Geographic Variation, CO-EVOLUTION: Art + Biology in the Museum.

Incorporating art and museums so students can explore multiple aspects of geographic variation among organisms and relate that variation to potentially causal evolutionary processes.

Year 3 - Evolutionary Dynamics of Genomes

Year 3 - Evolutionary Dynamics of Genomes

Exploring the extensive modern and historical genetic data sets available through our collections to compare patterns of genomic variation within and among evolutionary lineages.

Year 4 - Biotic Response to Climate Change

Year 4 - Biotic Response to Climate Change

Examining historical relationships between climate change and biotic diversity utilizing extensive natural history collections and datasets.

Year 5 - The Human Dimension of Natural History

Year 5 - The Human Dimension of Natural History

Utilizing an integrated, museum-based approach to characterize interactions and impacts of the natural world on humans and their pathogens.

For Educators

For Educators

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 :

  1. Integrative Inventories: Complex Biotic Associations Across Space and Time
  2. Geographic Variation
  3. Evolutionary Dynamics of Genomes
  4. Biotic Response to Climate Change
  5. The Human Dimension of Natural History

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:

  • developing teaching and analytic tools for training students in the emerging fields of climate change, evolutionary genomics and molecular ecology
  • developing instructional tools for museum databases, such as ARCTOS, that are freely available to the public
  • developing an integrated network of educators working on specimen-based questions
  • including minority and female scientists, agency biologists, academics, international participants, and museums with large public audiences
  • training undergraduate students in museum-based field and laboratory research
  • conducting outreach targeted to underrepresented students with an emphasis on issues relevant to their communities.

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.