The 2002 NRC Report "Bio 2010" (NRC, 2003), calling for changes in undergraduate education for biologists, suggested the establishment of summer workshops to help implement reform. While the report was in press, Millard Susman, a retired genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Bob Yuan, a professor at University of Maryland-College Park who also works as a consultant for the National Research Council's (NRC) Board on Life Sciences, came up with an interesting idea about the form such workshops might take. Both had participated in and had been inspired by the well known Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Courses on specific research areas in molecular biology and genetics. Why not create a summer institute modeled on these courses, but focused on education? Students and instructors would spend together a few days of intensive lectures, seminars, and laboratory work, but with the goal of learning about new research-based ways to improve undergraduate biology teaching at large universities rather than learning about a new area of biological research. Serious planning for the first Institute began in early 2003, with help from other NRC staff, as well as faculty members from the Center for Biology Education at UW Madison, which had agreed to host the Institute. The committee agreed that the first Institute should be a pilot, to test the idea that the intellectual intensity and excitement of a Cold Spring Harbor course could be generated among participants in a workshop on life sciences pedagogy. The success of this first Institute exceeded the participants' expectations. It is believed that the Summer Institute on Education in Biology can have a ripple effect that could lead to major widespread improvement in undergraduate biology instruction. (Contains 5 footnotes.)