With support from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), a community of biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB) scientist-educators has developed and administered an assessment instrument designed to evaluate student competence across four core concept and skill areas fundamental to BMB. The four areas encompass energy and metabolism; information storage and transfer; macromolecular structure, function, and assembly; and skills including analytical and quantitative reasoning. First offered in 2014, the exam has now been administered to nearly 4000 students in ASBMB-accredited programs at more than 70 colleges and universities. Here, we describe the development and continued maturation of the exam program, including the organic role of faculty volunteers as drivers and stewards of all facets: content and format selection, question development, and scoring.

Vol. 20, No. 2

June 01, 2021

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History

Submitted: 5 December 2019

Revised: 8 February 2021

Accepted: 11 February 2021

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© 2021 Q. Zeidan et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2021 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

This work was funded by the Teagle Foundation and the ASBMB. The authors thank the reviewers of this Essay for their thoughtful comments. We also thank Cheryl Bailey for her leadership as chair of the ASBMB Education and Professional Development Committee. We deeply appreciate the dedication of everyone involved in question development and exam scoring, especially ASBMB Education Fellows: Benjamin Alper, Rafael Alvarez-Gonzalez, Michele Alves-Bezerra, Ellen Anderson, Cindy Arrigo, Christina Arther, Suzanne Barbour, Ana Maria Barral, J. Ellis Bell, Jessica Bell, Paul Black, Michael Borland, Cory Brooks, Benjamin Caldwell, Kevin Callahan, Zachary Campbell, Danielle Cass, Vidya Chandrasekaran, Joseph Chihade, Brian Chiswell, Brian Cohen, Brooks Crickard, Laura Danai, Amy Danowitz, Nicole Davis, Gergana Deevska, Rebecca Dickstein, Edward Ferroni, Kirsten Fertuck, Emily Fogle, Geoffrey Ford, Kristin Fox, René Fuanta, Scott Gabriel, Allison Goldberg, Joy Goto, Thomas Goyne, David Gross, Nicholas Grossoehme, Bonnie Hall, Orla Hart, Curtis Henderson, Jennifer Hennigan, Doba Jackson, Henry Jakubowski, Sara Johnson, Carol A. Jones, Kelly Keenan, Malik Keshwani, Youngjoo Kim, Melissa Kosinski-Collins, Cheryl Kozina, Anne Kruchten, Michael Latham, Jim Lawrence, Stefanie Leacock, Watson Lees, Eric Lewis, Robley Light, Debra Martin, Betsy Martinez-Vaz, John May, Michael Mendenhall, Pamela Mertz, Florencia Meyer, Natalie Mikita, Stephen Mills, Rachel Milner, Rebecca Moen, Sarah Mordan-McCombs, Dana Morrone, Christopher Myer, Alexis Nagengast, Amjad Nasir, Venkatesh Nemmara, Ellie Nguyen, James Nolan, Daniel O’Keefe, Amy Parente, Mary Peek, John Penniston, Joseph Provost, Aswathy Rai, Supriyo Ray, Nancy Rice, John Richardson, Karen Rippe, Jennifer Roecklein-Canfield, Niina Ronkainen, Melissa Rowland-Goldsmith, Robin Rylaarsdam, John Santalucia, Kara Sawarynski, Marcia Schilling, Kristopher Schmidt, Jessica Schrader, David Segal, Cheryl Sensibaugh, Shameka Shelby, Joshua Slee, Alyson Smith, Dheeraj Soni, Claudia B. Späni, Amy Springer, Evelyn Swain, Uma Swamy, Blair Szymczyna, Ann Taylor, Cassidy Terrell, Candace Timpte, Pam Trotter, Sonia Underwood, Melanie Van Stry, Carrie Vance, Quinn Vega, Sarah Wacker, John Weldon, Scott Witherow, Michael Wolyniak, Ann Wright, Chuan Xiao, Yujia Xu, Philip Yeagle, Laura Zapanta, Nicholas Zeringo, Xiao-Ning Zhang, and Jing Zhang. Finally, our sincere thanks to participating institutions and students for their commitment to BMB teaching and learning.

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