Cottrell Scholars Collaborative -- Integrating Research and Teaching

Higher education reform needs to move towards a more interactive and integrated model, in which there is greater curricular emphasis in skill development, multi-discipline integration, and innovative connectivity, rather than traditional content driven curricula. This is even more crucial in STEM education, given our current slow down relative to other countries and the need to remain competitive in a global environment. Successful reforms require a seamless integration of research and teaching where education excellence and research excellence are not viewed by faculty as a zero sum game but as mutually benefitting ingredients of academic success. Cottrell scholars are selected among top ranking young academics with an equal passionate commitment to research excellence and education. Recently, these national group of academics sponsored by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement have created the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative (CSC) which aims at creating a self-supporting group that promotes integration of research and teaching at a national level with different initiatives. I will describe in these talk the aim of this group and the different sponsored projects that CSC is undertaking and the types of collective and individual efforts that are making a difference in sustainable education reform.