Before 1993 a limited number of faculty members at Louisiana universities worked in virtual isolation to develop courses that actively engaged students in the learning process. With the advent of the Louisiana Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers (LaCEPT) and the annual LaCEPT state meetings, these faculty members plus colleagues and administrators from their universities had opportunities to meet and learn how others from across the nation were addressing the problem of improving the education of Preservice teachers. The only thing missing was adequate time for groups of faculty to meet and actually work on issues that concerned them all. Responding to input from Directors of the local LaCEPT Campus Renewal Programs (CRP), LaCEPT funds were made available for selected universities to host regional workshops.

To date Louisiana Tech University's CRP has hosted four regional workshops; a fifth is planned for the spring of 2001. The first four workshops included:

• Fostering Critical Thinking In Science and Engineering
  Dr. Craig Nelson, Professor, Indiana University
  February 22-23, 1996
• Designing and Running Investigative Biology Laboratories
  Dr. Marshall Sundberg, Emporia State University
  Dr. Joe Armstrong, Illinois State University
  Dr. Michael Dini, Texas Tech University
  Dr. Bill Wischusen, Louisiana State University
  May 25-28, 1998
• Innovation in Large Lectures - Teaching for Active Learning
  Dr. Diane Ebert-May, Michigan State University
  Jan 25-16, 1999
• Follow-up to Innovation in Large Lectures - Teaching for Active Learning
  Linda L. Ramsey, Louisiana Tech University
  Dr. David Radford, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  Dr. William C. Deese, Louisiana Tech University
  May 25-26, 1999

A fifth workshop, Assessing What We Really Want Students to Know and Be Able to Do, will be offered in the spring of 2001.

The positive response to the workshop offerings has been exciting and rewarding. Over 25 faculty members from across Louisiana attended the first workshop on critical thinking. Input from participants at that workshop and discussions with other colleagues led to the workshop on designing and running investigative biology laboratories. Although space and other logistical constraints limited participation to 24, the week-long investigative biology laboratories workshop was extremely successful. As an outgrowth of the workshop, presenters Marsh Sundberg, Joe Armstrong, and Linda Ramsey were invited to lead a week-long NSF Chautauqua short-course on designing investigative labs at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan. A paper by Sundberg, Armstrong and Dini titled "Some Practical Tips for Instituting Investigative Biology Laboratories" that is based on round tables and discussions held at that workshop has been published in The Journal of College Science Teaching (VOL XXIX No 5 March/April 2000 pp 353-359).

The workshop on active learning in large lecture sections generated the greatest interest. Funding was initially provided for 30 faculty participants. When more than 60 university faculty from Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama registered for the workshop, additional funds had to be found to meet the demand. Forty-five of the 63 participants who participated in the initial workshop returned for a 2-day follow-up session to discuss the results of the new techniques they had tried.