AIM-UP! (Advancing the Integration of Museums into Undergraduate Programs) is a recently funded NSF Research Coordination Network focused on new ways of incorporating the extensive archives and cyberinfrastructure of natural history museums into undergraduate education. There are five primary themes: Complex Biotic Associations Across Space and Time, Geographic Variation, Evolutionary Dynamics of Genomes, Biotic Response to Climate Change, and Co-evolving Communities of Pathogens and Hosts as Related to Emerging Diseases.
AIM-UP! is refining existing efforts and developing new integrated approaches to collections-based training in large-scale questions using the combined and broad-based expertise of educators, curators, collection managers, database managers, and scientists whose teaching and investigations span various disciplines and relate to topics covering a wide spectrum of time and space. 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 experiences across these institutions, it is currently being expanded to other educational institutions, federal agencies, Latin American institutions, and a large museum-based genetic consortium in Canada.
If you are interested in finding out more about the activities and objectives of AIM-UP! please visit the website at: https://sites.google.com/site/1aimup/ or contact Gordon Jarrell at gordon.jarrell@gmail.com or Joseph Cook at tucojoe@gmail.com.