LANCASTER, Pa. — The POGIL Project congratulates Ashley Mahoney (Bethel University) and Rob Whitnell (Guilford College) on receiving The Project's 2016 SPUR+  grant for their proposal, "SPIRAL: Strengthening the use of Process, Inquiry, Reflection and Application in the Laboratory." The SPIRAL project will bring together faculty teams to write and test inquiry-based experiments for a broad range of introductory chemistry courses. Mahoney is Professor of Chemistry at Bethel University in St. Paul, MN, and Whitnell is Professor of Chemistry at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC.

The SPIRAL proposal was selected by The POGIL Project’s Steering Committee for its strong support of collaboration that is closely aligned with the goals of The POGIL Project and strategic plan, and the significant experience and successful track record of the project team.

The overall goals for the project are to create experiments that draw relevant connections between the experiments and broader topics of student interest, are adaptable to different kinds of introductory chemistry courses, will strengthen student process and reflection skills, and can be completed in a single laboratory session. The faculty involved in the project are all experienced in using guided inquiry in class, lab or both, and represent a wide range of institutions.

The POGIL Project 's SPUR+ grants are designed to promote new ideas and spurcollaboration between POGIL community members. SPUR+ will award small seed grants of up to $2500 for proposals that further the goals of The POGIL Project as described in its current strategic plan.

The POGIL Project works with educators to disseminate its unique pedagogy at the secondary and college levels through professional development workshops around the nation, as well as to produce POGIL curricular materials for both high school and university classrooms.  POGIL stands for Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, a student-centered, group-learning instructional strategy and philosophy developed through research on how students learn best.