To: Curriculum Committee Chairs and Members

From: Lance Urven, Biological Sciences Chair

Date: March 8, 2000

Re: Summary of Curricular Proposals for Biological Sciences

Biological Sciences is seeking to re-allocate credits in its emphases to reduce unintentional course redundancy and provide better depth and breadth of instruction in genetics, cell biology, and biotechnology.

First, we wish to create efficiencies in the introductory sequence for majors, minors, and health pre-professionals by combining two @ two-hour lab periods into one three hour lab period. This would reduce one contact and one credit hour for each of the courses, General Botany and General Zoology. Lectures will not be changed, and labs will cover the same topics, but laboratory exercises that have been less effective may be cut or reduced in instances where time becomes limiting under the new format. Offering one longer lab in place of two shorter labs should minimize removal of material, since less time will be needed each week for lab orientations and student station set-up and tear-down. Instructors will also reduce unintentional redundancies between these two courses to generate more efficiencies, as they continue to collaborate more closely on content in the two courses.

One of the two credits released from the introductory courses will be used in Introduction to Genetics, also required of all these students. This will allow less time to be spent on genetics in the "General" courses, and allow Genetics instructors time for more depth of coverage in this central discipline of biology. The other credit will be used as an elective in most Biology Emphases, and for a new lab course in the Cell Biology and Physiology Emphasis. Introduction to Cell Biology is an entry course for this emphasis, and currently suffers from the same problem as Introduction to Genetics...insufficient time to adequately cover topics. We propose to relieve this concern by increasing content in Introduction to Cell Biology by converting its two hour lab period to a one hour lecture. The lab material will be moved to a separate course, Biotechnology Laboratory Methods, for one credit and three contact hours per week. Such a shift will increase lab time by 50%, bring the lab contact hours in line with most majors/minors courses in Chemistry and Physics, and be consistent with the gradual movement toward three hour labs in Biological Sciences majors’/minors’ courses.

In sum, we believe these changes will improve the educational outcomes for students in all our emphases at little or no additional cost by redistributing credit and contact hours within our curricula in a more efficient manner. The contact and credit hour shifts are summarized in the table below.