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Mastery of quantitative skills is increasingly critical for student success in life sciences, but few curricula adequately incorporate quantitative skills. Quantitative Biology at Community Colleges (QB@CC) is designed to address this need by building a grassroots consortium of community college faculty to (1) engage in interdisciplinary partnerships that increase participant confidence in life science, mathematics, and statistics domains; (2) generate and publish a collection of quantitative skills--focused open education resources (OER); and (3) disseminate these OER and pedagogical practices widely, in turn expanding the network. Currently in its third year, QB@CC has recruited 70 faculty into the network and created 20 modules. Modules can be accessed by interested biology and mathematics educators in high school, 2-year, and 4-year institutions. Here, we use survey responses, focus group interviews, and document analyses (principles-focused evaluation) to evaluate the progress in accomplishing these goals midway through the QB@CC program. The QB@CC network provides a model for developing and sustaining an interdisciplinary community that benefits participants and generates valuable resources for the broader community. Similar network-building programs may wish to adopt some of the effective aspects of the QB@CC network model to meet their objectives.

Coursework that is dependent on experiential learning, such as that offered in the laboratory-based sciences, can present barriers for a variety of students. These barriers can be magnified for students who experience disabilities that impact their access to the full depth of the course content and materials. Our unique perspective was formed primarily by supporting two blind students at two institution types across multiple biological science departments. In this paper, we explain the barriers we find are currently impacting blind and visually impaired (VI) students' access to STEM as well as some tools to navigate creating more equitable and accessible spaces to support blind/VI students in STEM. More specifically, we provide general recommendations for working with blind/VI students using a student-centered approach to planning and daily interactions, followed by tips and tools for preparing accessible materials and a case study on how to use learning outcomes to modify course activities to be more useful for blind/VI students, and lastly we provide recommendations for important collaborations.

Barriers to transfer students include lost credit caused by lack of curricular alignment across institutions of higher learning. This is particularly evident in series courses like introductory biology. We propose to streamline transfer issues using a shared set of course-level learning outcomes (CLOs) developed collaboratively by faculty across multiple institutions. Our biggest challenge was the development of CLOs aligned to Vision and Change and broad enough for large-scale implementation. We present the CLOs generated by the Northwest Biosciences Consortium faculty network along with data on faculty buy-in to using Vision and Change in their curriculum. Additionally, we found an increased familiarity with and use of Vision and Change in curriculum development over time. Finally, we provide information on implementation of CLOs and suggestions of methods for aligning curricula across networks.

Biology education research (BER), currently conducted mostly at four-year colleges and universities, is changing the culture of teaching biology and improving student success. We are community college faculty participating in the NSF-funded CC Bio INSITES network, getting training and support in BER to ask questions to improve student success in our highly diverse classes. Our research adapts and validates existing BER surveys and interventions in Hispanic-serving college settings, with pre-health professions' students, and with traditionally underserved populations in STEM. BER projects serve assessment and program review goals common across many community colleges, and when implemented with high-impact practices, BER measures the gains in student retention and success. We call for support to continue changing the culture of discipline-based education research at community colleges.