Fostering Interdisciplinary or Integrative Learning
1. Foundations in Biology I and II: As part of Project SCICOMP, we have developed two new courses titled Foundations in Biology I and II. Dr. Shubha K. Ireland spearheaded these efforts. Both these courses serve as primers for introducing scientific competencies on biomath, biochemistry, biophysics and biostatistics. Both are scheduled to meet once a week for two hours and students are kept very busy with a range of activities and experiments. These include, for example, performing serial dilutions and viable counting using fungi or bacteria, preparing percent, molar and stock solutions, discussing primary literature, graphing using semi-log papers (and on Excel), solving word problems in math, collecting their own data to perform descriptive statistics and working with a number of experimental systems (including bean beetles, seeds and even inanimate objects like loaded dice!), and analyzing results using various statistical tests. They also learn the significance and meaning of standard deviation and the p-values in Chi-Square. Throughout these activities, students have to be focused, engaged and thinking critically. While some students have expressed that these courses are "a lot of work for one credit!", most enjoy the experience. Student feedback and input from instructors teaching other upper-level STEM disciplines suggest that the foundations courses are indeed having a positive impact on students' inquiry skills and active learning. More than 50% of the Biology faculty members of all ranks have taught these courses at least once.
2. Biomedical Physics: This too is a recently developed course taught by faculty in biology (Dr. Shubha K. Ireland) and physics (Dr. Dean Richardson). Building on the principles covered in the foundations courses described above, this upper-level elective course covers selected topics in physics (electricity, magnetism, electromagnetic radiation, sound, and nuclear physics) and their applications as they relate to the physiology of the human body (nervous system, heart and circulation, hearing, sight, etc.) and diagnostic medicine (MRI, CT scans, current cancer treatments, etc.). It has only been taught twice but the student response has been highly positive.
3. Bringing in "the worm" in Genetics Lab and Cell Biology Lab: Dr. Peter Barrett is a geneticist by training. He has years of experience working with Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans or "the worm"), a transparent nematode of about 1 mm in length which feeds of bacteria like Escherichia coli. His research program focuses on the mutagenesis and gene targeting, cell biology, organogenesis, neurogenetics and nociception of C. elegans. As an instructor, with his long-standing interest in bringing research in the classroom, Dr. Barrett has used his expertise in C. elegans to introduce several new, open ended exercises in both, the Genetics lab (a required course for all Biology majors) and the Cell Biology lab (a popular upper level elective). For the Genetics Lab, for example, he has developed a 'crossing exercise that extends for few weeks of the semester. It requires students to determine the mode of inheritance for any of the available unknown, visible mutants that they select as their "mystery mutant". This is not an easy feat because in a relatively short period of time, students have to not only be remember all the aseptic techniques they have learned a semester before (in Micro lab) but also get proficient in specialized techniques like culturing worms, handling contamination, identifying worm-gender, setting up genetic crosses, maintaining the strains, and scoring and analyzing data. These initial exercises have now been expanded to include multiple types of inheritance (autosomal versus sex-linked, dominant versus recessive) as well as extensions to Mendelian analysis (semidominance, incomplete penetrance, delayed age of onset). Students are allowed to perform the crosses as many times as need be (within reasonable limits) and also perform follow-up experiments, to try to determine the inheritance pattern. Despite the challenges, students get to apply so much of the material learned in the lectures and master new skills that many rate this course and the professor highly!
For Cell Biology Lab, Dr. Barrett has included C. elegans (endocytosis experiments) as well as exercises with Planaria regeneration (adapted from MIT/HHMI). In addition, he has recently introduced new experiments with Daphnia (the "water flea", a small crustacean), adapted from the Nuffield Foundation, where students expose the Daphnia to various cardioactive compounds and measure changes in heart rate caused by effects on cellular receptors. Each of these experiments is open-ended and allows the students to use the knowledge learned in the lecture to interpret the results. Students are encouraged to conduct follow-up experiments, if they determine that any of the results they obtain are significant.
4. Pathology Principles and Techniques: Drs. Ian Davenport and Thomas Huckaba have recently developed an upper level elective entitled 'Pathology Principles and Techniques'. This course is designed to expose students to the practical applications of knowledge learned in earlier courses including Histology (a pre-requisite for taking this course). The students work in groups and are assigned four unknown pathologic tissues and four pathology reports with blanked out ID numbers. They are then expected to embed, section and stain the tissues to ultimately: 1) identify the tissue, 2) establish the pathology and 3) test for an accurate diagnosis. As they work on this project, students learn a range of new skills and get to see first-hand what was involved in obtaining the 'prepared slides' they had observed in the Histology lab course. They enjoy learning paraffin embedding/sectioning for H&E staining, plastic embedding/sectioning for methylene blue and basic fuschin staining, and cryosectioning for immunohistochemistry. They work hard to identify and characterize all tissues. As part of their course grade, they present their work in multiple scientifically recognized formats (poster, oral presentation and a paper).
5. Immunology Lab: Dr. Qian-Jin Zhang is an immunologist with a well-established research program focused on: 1) ovarian cancer prognostic biomarker detection and 2) dissection of the major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) antigen processing and presentation pathway. His teaching responsibilities include Immunology lecture and lab; both upper level electives which he has revamped significantly to make them integrative. For example, in the lecture, students learn not only 'text book' immunology, but from published articles on current immunological areas of interest. In the lab, Dr. Zhang, in collaboration with Dr. Harris McFerrin who also has experience in this field, has developed modules where students get an opportunity to actually apply the knowledge learned in lectures by conducting experiments using state of the art technologies such as immunohistochemistry, ELISA assay, flow cytometry, Western blotting and 51Cr-release assay. It is no wonder that despite the complexity of the subject matter, students enjoy both these classes! Immunology continues to be one of the sought-after electives.
6. Biology in Literature: This recently-developed course is team-taught by faculty from biology (Dr. Peter Martinat) and from the department of English (Dr. Robin Runia). Within a selected theme (for example, evolution or animal behavior), students review and analyze science as described in selected English novels, short stories, essays, etc. In the process, they learn more about how biological science is actually perceived by non-science authors.