Introduction
Representation matters. For young students from the Global South who want to start a career in science, systemic knowledge gaps and other barriers persist, making access to higher education in North America and Europe more difficult. Evolutionary Biology is not an exception, despite ongoing efforts to increase inclusion. To help address this, we created an online, free, and inclusive Evolutionary Biology Crash Course and other affiliated services and opportunities to help prospective students achieve a better understanding of and access to the field.
Our Mission
We seek to increase our participant’s chances of obtaining access to high level master's programmes, and an opportunity at a career as future evolutionary biologists. We envision a future where evolutionary biology as a field is more inclusive, representative, and accessible to all those who want to make their mark and better the world.
The past and the future!
We already held two editions of the crash course, in 2022 and 2023. We considered them a huge success, with over 100 students successfully completing the program. In addition to a crash course, we also have an active mentorship program, a mini grant program, outreach through social media, and a translation initiative to make our content even more accessible. Please check out the pages on our website for more details!
Practicalities
Registration
The 2024 edition of EvoBio Crash Course will run from the 10-21 of June. The registration is open, until June 4th (23:59 CET) 2024 on this link. The course will be completely free, and held online for two weeks.
Entry Requirements
Our course is designed for everyone with an interest in evolutionary biology—and especially students from the Global South. Already being engaged in the field is not a requirement, but we do ask you to consider that our course is designed for undergraduate students with a background in the Biological Sciences.
Certificates of Completion
Once you’ve completed our course, we hand out a certificate of completion. Depending on how you took the course, we give out two types of certificates.
Type 1. This certification is given to students who attend and engage in at least 50% of the live Q&A sessions, and who hand in all the practical exercises.
Type 2. This certification is given to students who follow the course on their own time, and who do not attend the live sessions.
Funding
Since two years, the SMBE IDEA Task Force is funding our crash course as well as our other endeavours. The first edition of our crash course was made possible thanks to funding provided by the Equal Opportunities Initiative Fund of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). Moreover, we are kindly supported by the Erasmus Mundus Master in Evolutionary Biology (MEME). If you are an institution or organization who likes what we do, and you wish to provide support in some way (be it financial, prizes for our academic competitions, logistical support, etc.) please reach out to us. We would love to hear from you!