Welcome to Volume 1 of TIEE. Our expectations for this and upcoming volumes are high - to improve university ecology teaching nationwide. To do so, we have developed a resource for busy ecology faculty who are looking for new ways to reach their students, or who perhaps want to learn more about teaching and learning.

TIEE grew out of several ESA sessions about undergraduate teaching. In these meetings some faculty said that they wanted to actively involve their students more in classes, but didn’t know how. Others knew there was a great deal of good teaching information on the web but did not have the time to find it. Some experienced faculty already trying new ways to teach wanted to push themselves further. We developed TIEE as a result of all of these comments.

The three sections of the Volume - Issues, Experiments, and Teaching - are designed to meet this broad range of needs. Experiments are for lab sections of courses, and Issues can be used in lecture, lab, and for homework. There are many links from both Experiments and Issues to the Teaching section which also includes www resources, essays, and tutorials. The Index will help you find what you need quickly. You can print out the PDF files or use TIEE in class directly from the web or this CD.

Clearly, this is just a beginning. Future volumes will expand the range of labs and Issue topics. We already have numerous submissions for Volume II, which will be published in late spring, and we welcome more. In addition, if you have ideas for contributing something other than an Experiment or an Issue, please contact us. TIEE will grow with your input.

Because TIEE evolved from the Education Section of ESA and ecologists are authors, reviewers, and users, it is very much a community effort. In addition to submitting to TIEE, we ask for your suggestions and critiques (please email the TIEE Managing Editor at TIEEsubmissions@esa.org).

Finally, we thank the generous support of the ESA who hosts TIEE on their website, helps organize workshops at annual meetings, and give us invaluable advice. We also thank the Division of Undergraduate Education at NSF for supporting development of the site and CD-ROM (NSF DUE #0127388 and #9952347). Our TIEE Advisory Committee and Editors (see TIEE Overview) have also been very generous with their time and expertise.

Charlene D’Avanzo and Bruce W. Grant
January 2004