Brian Alters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brian J. Alters (B.Sc., Ph.D. USC) is an Associate Professor of Education and Sir William Dawson Scholar at McGill University, where he also holds the Tomlinson Chair in Science Education and is both founder and Director of the Evolution Education Research Centre. He has taught science education at both Harvard and McGill Univerties, and is regarded as a specialist in evolution education.

Alters has a BSc in biology and a PhD in science education from the University of Southern California.

Alters is the author of several books on biology and the Intelligent Design controversy. With his wife Sandra M. Alters, he has written Biology: Understanding Life^[1] which he describes as "a university biology non-majors textbook", and Teaching Biology in Higher Education^[2], "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^[3] which he says is "a book specifically about the conflict that instructors see students bring into their courses concerning evolution". He also contributed a chapter to the a chapter in Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools^[4], edited by Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the NCSE.

Because of this specialization, he was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.^[5]^[6]^[7].

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^[8].

In 2005 he was appointed to the board of directors of the American-based National Center for Science Education and received its "friend of Darwin" award.

[edit] Grant controversy

There was some controversy when in 2006 he was denied funding for a research project into the negative effects of ID movement in Canada, when the reason stated was 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^[9] and elsewhere^[10]