In February 1987, the "founders" (and faculty-to-be) met for the first time at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The occasion was the first meeting of the Task Force on Teacher Institutes of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) located in Berkeley, California and funded then by a grant that Stan Weinberg, the Founding Father of NCSE, had received from the Carnegie and Lounsbury Foundation. This began their decade of activity to promote Evolution teaching.

Jean Beard chaired that Task Force and called the meeting of its seven members to "brainstorm" various ideas for reaching and helping high school biology teachers to cope with the problems associated with teaching evolution. The four members were: Dr. Ronald Pine (IMSA), Dr. George Magrane, Dr. Adela Elwell, and Ms. Frances Vandervoort. From that and subsequent meetings, the Task Force applied to the National Science Foundation for a Teacher Enhancement grant. That proposal was denied based on its being overstaffed and too grandiose for an initial effort, even though the reviewers thought the basic idea was good. In 1988 with Carnegie funding expiring and Task Force members going on to other projects, Jean Beard and Craig Nelson decided to write a second, smaller proposal to NSF entitled "Evolution and the Nature of Science Institutes for High School Biology Teachers." Martin Nickels was included as a faculty member, giving us one science educator, one biologist, and one anthropologist, a bare bones minimum staff. This proposal was funded in 1989. Jean, Craig, and Martin have served as Co-Directors and faculty of the Institutes since its beginning.

The trio met in Seattle at the NSTA convention in March and began the planning of a detailed institute. Planning was refined in June 1989 at Indiana University in Bloomington a few days before greeting 30 high school biology teachers on the "opening day" of the first ENSI. The program eventually received two more NSF grants funding a total of 6 years of ENSIs (and moving the operation to San Jose in 1992) and 6 years of "Satellite"-ENSIs, or "SENSIs". The SENSI concept was for experienced ENSI teachers, with additional training, to become "Lead Teachers", and teach the ENSI program to other teachers in two-week local institutes.

From 1989-94, 180 teachers from wide-ranging areas of the country were taught by the faculty. This turned out to be phase one. In phase two, 38 teachers from the first five ENSIs were given a second Summer of preparation to become pairs of Lead Teachers. In phase three, 49 SENSIs (satellite ENSIs) were taught by the Lead Teachers from 1992-98 to more that 650 teachers. The Lead Teachers have been active in making other presentations at places such as NABT and state meetings.