Physiology course for secondary school biology teachers.

The Department of Physiology at the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University offered a human physiology course to middle school and high school science teachers in the Richmond, VA, area. It was a three-credit course, team taught, and given at a location convenient to many area teachers. This course served the community by contributing to the continuing education efforts of teachers and concurrently enhanced our recruitment program by advertising "physiology" to teachers who will influence college-bound students for years to come. In addition, we established ties between teachers and physiology faculty such that continuing interactions (e.g., collaborative research during the summer) should be facilitated. The success of the course suggests that this is an effective way to serve local communities, enhance efforts to recruit graduate students into the basic sciences, and at the same time help reverse the educational crisis in the US by bolstering the backgrounds of secondary school teachers.