Pandemic SARS-CoV-2 has ushered in a renewed interest in science along with rapid changes to educational modalities. While technology provides a variety of ways to convey learning resources, the incorporation of alternate modalities can be intimidating for those designing curricula.

Quantitative metrics are widely employed to determine the probability of an applicant succeeding in a specific program of interest, ranging from undergraduate or graduate admissions to fellowships. The admissions office at the United States Military Academy at West Point uses an internal college entrance examination rank (CEER) assessment algorithm of high school students, based on ACT and SAT scores in addition to consideration of high school performance, to assess student academic abilities and their probability of surpassing graduation requirements. To develop a tool for predicting student performance in first-semester general chemistry, we utilized CEER scores to predict student success on the national exam produced by the American Chemical Society (ACS) for general chemistry. Our results show that CEER is a strong predictor of student outcomes and a better predictor when compared to SAT Math, ACT Science, or ACT Math in isolation. Further stratification of the CEER distribution into four categories, ranging from at-risk to high achiever, identified a gradient by which students are likely to exceed the national average on the ACS exam. To further assess this prediction, we then demonstrated that the CEER brackets correlated closely to student grades in the course, therein illustrating its utility in predicting categories of students who are likely to fail, underperform, or excel. We anticipate that these tools are broadly generalizable to undergraduate admissions decisions, can assist in the placement process for students in general or advanced sections of chemistry, could yield insight when making scholarship or fellowship decisions, and more broadly can facilitate the design of group learning dynamics aimed at enhancing student outcomes.

Introduction Military installations are at increased risk for the transmission of infectious disease. Personnel who live and train on military installations live and train near one another facilitating disease transmission. An understanding of historical sanitation and hygiene can inform modern practices. This is especially pertinent considering the continuing rise of variants of infectious diseases, such as the recent pandemic of the 2019 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. In this article, we review the rise and decline of infectious disease at the United States Military Academy (USMA) during the period spanning 1890 through 1910, and the public health interventions used to combat disease spread. Materials and Methods Primary data regarding cadet illness were acquired from the historical archives of the USMA. These included annual reports, clinical admission records, casualty ledgers, and sanitation reports. Unpublished documents from the medical history of USMA provide periodic trends of health among cadets because of infectious disease. Results Between 1890 and 1910, the USMA at West Point was confronted with cases of influenza, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, and malaria. In response, a series of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were instituted to curb the spread of infectious disease. These interventions most likely proved effective in suppressing the transmission of communicable diseases. The most common and arguably the most effective NPI was the physical separation of the sick from the well. Conclusions The USMA experience mirrored what was occurring in the larger U.S. Army in the early 20th century and may serve as a model for the application of NPIs in response to modern infectious diseases resulting from novel or unknown etiologies.

As educators and researchers, we often enjoy enlivening classroom discussions by including examples of cutting-edge high-throughput (HT) technologies that propelled scientific discovery and created repositories of new information. We also call for the use of evidence-based teaching practices to engage students in ways that promote equity and learning. The complex datasets produced by HT approaches can open the doors to discovery of novel genes, drugs, and regulatory networks, so students need experience with the effective design, implementation, and analysis of HT research. Nevertheless, we miss opportunities to contextualize, define, and explain the potential and limitations of HT methods. One evidence-based approach is to engage students in realistic HT case studies. HT cases immerse students with messy data, asking them to critically consider data analysis, experimental design, ethical implications, and HT technologies.The NSF HITS (High-throughput Discovery Science and Inquiry-based Case Studies for Today’s Students) Research Coordination Network in Undergraduate Biology Education seeks to improve student quantitative skills and participation in HT discovery. Researchers and instructors in the network learn about case pedagogy, HT technologies, publicly available datasets, and computational tools. Leveraging this training and interdisciplinary teamwork, HITS participants then create and implement HT cases. Our initial case collection has been used in >15 different courses at a variety of institutions engaging >600 students in HT discovery. We share here our rationale for engaging students in HT science, our HT cases, and network model to encourage other life science educators to join us and further develop and integrate HT complex datasets into curricula.

<p>Prior to the start of every academic year, the Department of Chemistry and Life Science in the United States Military Academy at West Point conducts a four-week Faculty Development Workshop (FDW). The purpose of FDW is to develop new faculty such that they are prepared to effectively educate students, and a critical hallmark of this program is in-depth feedback and mentorship from senior faculty. With nationwide uncertainty regarding the method of instruction for the upcoming semester, ranging from remote to in-person, and the possibility that schools may need to transition to exclusively remote learning during the semester due to health concerns from Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), this year’s FDW incorporated different modes of instruction. Using classrooms with a maximum capacity of 20 students, new instructors conducted lessons fully remote, in-person with modified classroom paradigms, and through a hybrid approach where half of the students attended class synchronously online and the other half attended class in-person to facilitate social distancing requirements. In the process of preparing new instructors for the upcoming semester and equipping them with tools to teach under varied conditions, numerous lessons were learned on best practices for teaching this fall. In this manuscript, we describe our implementation of FDW and review the aforementioned teaching modalities, with a critical focus on the advantages and disadvantages of each teaching approach during COVID-19 and faculty perceptions on the difficulty and efficacy of each format of instruction.</p>

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