Biology in a Human Context: A New Course for Non-Science Majors

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It is increasingly obvious that today's citizens must be biologically literate to make informed decisions affecting us individually and collectively. Too often they are not. The aim of our project is to address this challenge by improving undergraduate biology education for non-science majors in two-year and four-year colleges. This will first be effected in our own two and four year colleges, and then expanded to encourage other colleges and universities by sharing what we have learned and accomplished. The specific goal is to create, fully develop, and implement a new and innovative year long introductory biology course for non-science majors entitled: Biology in a Human Context. To meet this goal, an already existing team of faculty from all six academic units at the University of Cincinnati which offer biology courses are working with faculty and staff from the University Center for Academic Technologies, the College of Education, the Office of Writing Across the Curriculum, and the General Education Council. The course will be taught by the biology faculty in their respective units, and will fulfill both the Collegiate and General Education natural science requirements. Included are four, two-year and two, four-year colleges involving over 1,000 undergraduates annually, including many pre-service teachers who are preparing to teach grades K-8. Pre-service secondary teachers who are also biology majors will act as instructional assistants. The new course will be a significant departure in both content and pedagogy from the existing traditional one, which it will eventually replace if determined to be successful through careful evaluation.