Dear colleague,

We are a group of evolutionary biologists and biology education
researchers conducting a collaborative research project to understand
the impacts of inclusive evolutionary biology educational materials
on biology undergraduates, with the hope that these materials enhance
awareness of the misapplications of evolutionary concepts to human society
by students. Our interdisciplinary collaboration, known as the Resources
for Inclusive Evolution Education (RIE2) group, has generated teaching
modules that take a new approach to presenting several complex concepts
in evolutionary biology.

We are explicitly looking for instructors of biology and evolution
courses at US and Canadian colleges and universities to pilot our module
on adaptation (found here) in spring 2026. To test the efficacy of this
module, we have designed an experiment that manipulates the module to
feature either traditional examples of adaptation (e.g., bird bills/beaks)
or examples that ask students to consider how adaptationist thinking
may be misapplied to humans during the second part of instruction.

If you are interested in participating in this study, we will ask
you to use approximately one week of your course (2-3 classes) to
implement our module on adaptation and have students fill out a survey
that characterizes their experiences with the module before and after
interacting with the provided course material.

Selected instructors will receive $250 compensation for full
participation.

For more information about this study, please read the attached
information letter. If you are interested in participating as an
instructor in this study, please fill out the survey below to express
your interest by December 12th, 2025:

https://sunybuffalo.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1ZYMiROU7fkhcbk

Priority will be given to instructors who express interest by December
12th, but we will consider other applications on a rolling basis. We will
meet with all instructors teaching these modules in early January 2026.

To help spread the word, please forward this message to any instructors
of introductory biology or evolution classes in your biology department.

Thank you for helping with our efforts to improve evolutionary biology
education in undergraduate classrooms, and please reach out with any
questions. We look forward to hearing from you.

All the best,

Nancy Chen, Assistant Professor, University of Rochester (starting
2026: UCLA)
Robin Costello, Assistant Professor, University at Buffalo
Kiyoko Gotanda, Assistant Professor, Brock University
Carolyn Graham, Postdoctoral Researcher, University at Buffalo
Suegene Noh, Associate Professor, Colby College
Yaamini R. Venkataraman, Assistant Professor, Santa Clara University

Carolyn Graham, PhD
She/her/hers
Postdoctoral Researcher
Costello Lab
University at Buffalo
https://cdkgraham.wixsite.com/carolyn-graham

Carolyn Graham <graham29@buffalo.edu>

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