UG Major for the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Melissa Michael, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Program Description
Development of a broad-based, undergraduate biology major that allowed students more freedom to design their own path through the biological content.
Program Purpose
In a School of Life Sciences comprised of six departments (Cell & Developmental Biology, Microbiology, Molecular & Integrative Physiology, Plant Biology, Animal Biology and Entomology), we had seven undergraduate (UG) majors with only a shared two-course introductory biology sequence. Each department had a small major, and then there was a larger generalized "biology" major that covered topics in all departments. The UG majors were more-or-less run on autopilot as something that was designed and left to run with infrequent consideration of updating and modification. The Graduate majors in each departments were the primary focus of the faculty and received significantly more attention and care. We were at the precipice of organizational change and so we considered other options for our UG majors as well.
Over about 30 years, the departmental degree programs (6 total) became smaller in size, and the more generalized biology major grew. This happened through student choice. When we reorganized our School and our degree programs, it became clear from discussions with our peers, with our graduates who were now working in big pharma, and from our students that undergraduate "mini-PhD" majors were less desirable than a broad-based expanded major that allowed students more freedom to design their own path through the biological content. We decided to shift to a model where Graduate degree programs would be managed by the departments, and the UG major would be global, managed by the School. The UG major would encompass the disciplines in our new School of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Departments of Biochemistry, Cell & Developmental Biology, Molecular & Integrative Physiology and Microbiology).
Program Goals
1. Develop a degree program for undergraduates that would prepare them well for graduate school, professional school, and jobs without requiring that they narrow their biological focus as an undergraduate. 2. Increase the total number of undergraduates served while maintaining excellent quality through the use of a support structure (Instructional Program). 3. Develop and execute a strategy whereby the curriculum is constantly updated and never allowed to languish and become outdated. Develop a mechanism for regular evaluation of outcomes that inform the curricular/course development and modification.
Program Activities
Created committees of faculty to develop a set of guiding principles and learning goals. Once established, they were used to begin to develop courses and course sequences for the first 2.5 years of the degree program. Our "intro biology majors course sequence" transitioned from 2 semesters, to three semesters, to five semesters ultimately. We wanted our students to have the strongest possible broad background to take with them into the "advanced courses" phase of their UG degree program. We rolled out the new curriculum with our first new incoming class while continuing to deliver to the "outgoing curriculum" for those students who entered under those parameters. This was a significant logistical challenge.
The "infrastructure" of the Instructional Program (non-tenure track individuals working as instructors, co-instructors, and course coordinators to provide support for faculty, training for graduate TAs, and to monitor student outcomes constantly) was critical to the success of the program.
Notes and Tips
The process was internal and faculty-driven. We allowed students autonomy to be creative with their advanced courses while lessening choice in the first two years. We created a vast array of supportive programs around the singular degree program including an Honors Concentration for the degree program. We constantly monitor learning outcomes of students as well as probing where our students go next and how successful they are there. Initially, we made some adjustments, but after a few years program content stabilized.
Evidence of Success
We have measures of how our students perform on entrance exams for various next destinations (graduate and professional school). The performance of students in the collective major exceeds the performance of the pre-reorganization students. In addition to improving our former performance, we doubled the total number of majors from 1000 to nearly 2000 in the span of 5 years. The total number of student enrollments in our courses (by non-majors) increased by two-thirds. Most everyone who has been present for this curricular transition agrees that this was the largest success of our organizational redesign.
Future Work
We continue to update and modify our courses on an annual basis. We are currently moving through our laboratory courses (lower- and upper-division) introducing a more student-centered approach where lab manual protocols are gone and replaced by students who research experimental approaches and design their own experiments (within a set of parameters).