Students Vet Science Courses

Life Science faculty members yesterday presented undergraduates with their first detailed look at next year’s interdisciplinary Life Sciences courses, which are aimed at framing the fundamentals of science within modern-day concerns.

The courses, Life Sciences 1a and Life Sciences 1b, will launch in the fall and the spring, respectively, and will fulfill the introductory requirements for students concentrating in biology, biochemical studies, biological anthropology, and chemistry.

These new classes are the product of more than 20 meetings over the last year by the Life Sciences Education Committee, which was convened by Chair of the Life Sciences Council Douglas A. Melton.

They are an attempt to retain students who come to Harvard with an interest in science but are pushed away because “it takes too long to get to interesting material as an undergraduate,” said Melton.

Faculty members at yesterday’s forum in the Biological Labs said that the new courses will continue to teach the basics of chemistry, biology, and genetics, but will do so in the framework of important issues in science today—such as the origin of life and the search for cures to HIV and cancer.

“[Future students] would tackle fundamental concepts but they would always be framed in these big questions,” said Robert A. Lue, a senior lecturer on molecular and cellular biology and co-chair of the Life Sciences Education Committee.

Life Sciences 1a, “An Integrated Introduction to the Life Sciences: Chemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology”—taught by a team including Lue—will include material currently taught in introductory courses such as Chemistry 5, “Introduction to Principles of Chemistry,” and will count for half of the one-year general chemistry requirement of premedical students.

Life Sciences 1b, “An Integrated Introduction to the Life Sciences: Genetics, Genomics, and Evolution” will include material from current courses such as Biological Sciences 50, “Genetics and Genomics,” and will count towards the biology premed requirement.

Students will be required to take Life Sciences 1a before or concurrent with Life Sciences 1b.

Lue said that 13 medical school deans were consulted about the courses, and they thought the idea was “incredibly exciting.”

Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences David R. Liu ’94, who will also teach Life Sciences 1a, provided an example of the interdisciplinary nature of the new courses.

While in the past, the concepts of molecular bonding and structure were taught by themselves in introductory chemistry courses, Liu said that they will now be taught in the context of how they affect DNA and DNA replication.

In a question-and-answer period at yesterday’s forum, some students questioned the large size of the new courses.

“We are really revisiting how these classes are structured,” Lue said, but “we simply do not have enough faculty” to teach these courses in small sections.

Lue added that the instructors are looking at ways of making the courses more interactive, including voluntary weekly review sessions. Students would also receive feedback from the teaching staff within the first three weeks of class.

The instructors are hoping to recruit focus groups of students to provide feedback on the course structure over the summer, Lue said.

Introductory courses in the physical sciences, similar to the new life sciences courses, are expected to be launched for the 2006-2007 academic year.

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.