Brian Alters - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Brian J. Alters is an Associate Professor of Education and Sir William Dawson Scholar at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

, where he also holds the Tomlinson Chair in Science Education

Science education

Science education is the field concerned with sharing science content and process with individuals not traditionally considered part of the scientific community. The target individuals may be children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education comprises...

and is both founder and Director of the Evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

Education Research Centre. He has taught science education at both Harvard

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

and McGill Universities, and is regarded as a specialist in evolution education.

Alters has a B.Sc. in biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

and a Ph.D. in science education

Science education

from the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

.

Alters is the author of several books on biology and the intelligent design

Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

controversy. With his wife Sandra M. Alters, he has written Biology: Understanding Life which he describes as "a university biology non-majors textbook", and Teaching Biology in Higher Education, "a book written to instructors at the college level on how to teach biology". He is also the author of Teaching Biological Evolution in Higher Education: Methodological, Religious, and Non-Religious Issues which he says is "a book specifically about the conflict that instructors see students bring into their courses concerning evolution". Alters and Alters have also written Defending Evolution, with a foreword by Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....

, which aims to help science teachers to understand the creation-evolution controversy

Creation-evolution controversy

The creation–evolution controversy is a recurring cultural, political, and theological dispute about the origins of the Earth, humanity, life, and the universe....

and to teach evolution effectively in light of the controversy. He also contributed a chapter to the a chapter in Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools, edited by Eugenie Scott

Eugenie Scott

Eugenie Carol Scott is an American physical anthropologist who has been the executive director of the National Center for Science Education since 1987...

and Glenn Branch

Glenn Branch

Glenn Branch is the Deputy Director of the National Center for Science Education and a prominent critic of creationism and its offshoot, intelligent design...

of the NCSE

NCSE

NCSE may refer to:*National Center for Science Education*National Council for Science and the Environment...

.

Because of this specialization, he was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design...

. He was also brought in for the retrial of Selman v. Cobb County before that was settled out of court in favor of the plaintiffs.

In 2003 Alters was first awarded the College of Education's highest teaching award, the Distinguished Teaching Award, followed by the Principal's Prize for Excellence in Teaching at McGill University.

In 2005 he was appointed to the board of directors of the American-based National Center for Science Education

National Center for Science Education

The National Center for Science Education is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, California affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It is the United States' leading anti-creationist organization, and defends the teaching of evolutionary biology and opposes...

and received its "friend of Darwin" award.

In 2008 Alters became a co-host of CBC Television's

CBC Television

CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...

nationally-broadcast prime-time science series Project X. His co-hosts are Dr. Jennifer Gardy (bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

/microbiology

Microbiology

Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are defined as any microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters or no cell at all . This includes eukaryotes, such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes...

at the University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

), Dr. Brian Fleck (professor of Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical engineering

Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...

at the University of Alberta

University of Alberta

The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...

), and Marc Huot (Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical engineering

student at the University of Alberta

University of Alberta

Grant controversy

In 2005 Alters was denied funding for a research project provisionally titled "Detrimental effects of popularizing anti-evolution's intelligent design theory on Canadian students, teachers, parents, administrators and policymakers." by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The SSHRC reason for the rejection included the statement that "Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design theory, was correct". This was reported in Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

and other media.

Letters were written to the SSHRC in support of Alters by the American Institute of Biological Sciences

American Institute of Biological Sciences

The American Institute of Biological Sciences is a non-profit scientific association that is dedicated to advancing biological research and education.-Overview:...

, the American Sociological Association

American Sociological Association

The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...

(ASA), the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, and others. The SSHRC replied by noting that "theory of evolution is not in doubt" but said that the reason for the rejection was that "the committee had serious concerns about the proposed research design".

Alters spoke about the incident in Humanist Perspectives.

External links

Evolution Education Research Centre (EERC)
Brian Alters discusses evolution and education at NIH, June 22, 2006
"Ties" to Canada by Brian Alters

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