Acquisition of Updated Equipment for an Integrated Cell and Molecular Biology Laboratory

直到最近，上层生物学核心课程包括细胞化学，细胞生物学，遗传学和发育生物学四个独立的讲座课程，沿着与其相关的实验室。这种策略的实验室经验是昂贵的教师的时间方面，是多余的课程内容方面，并没有为学生提供细胞，分子和发育生物学的综合性质的充分的看法。 该部门已取代了四个单独的（1学分）实验室与综合2学期（4学分）实验室序列。所有生物学专业的学生都参加实验室I：实验生物学，在那里他们学习基本的生物技术方法。然后，他们可以选择进入三个二级实验室之一，在那里他们使用在实验室I学到的技术来进行他们感兴趣的领域的调查。 生物科学系购买了设备和用品，以建立和升级显微镜，计算和分光光度计可用的资源。因此，学生能够获得动手实验室的经验与设备，准确地反映了当今的科学调查。这些实验室开发的所有方案和试剂都可分发给其他机构的同事。此外，作为第二学期专题的一部分，学生们将专题结果的摘要张贴在为本课程建立的万维网网页上。鼓励学生进一步他们的研究经验，因为他们在过去，通过夏季项目在个人研究者的实验室。

Until recently, the upper-level Biology core curriculum consisted of four separate lecture courses in Cell Chemistry, Cell Biology, Genetics, and Developmental Biology, along with their associated laboratories. This strategy for laboratory experience was expensive in terms of faculty time, was redundant in terms of course content, and did not provide students with an adequate view of the integrated nature of cellular, molecular, and developmental biology. The department has since replaced the four separate (1-credit) laboratories with an integrated 2-semester (4-credit) laboratory sequence. All Biology majors enroll in Lab I: Experimental Biology, where they learn basic biotechnological methods. They then have the choice of enrolling in one of three second-level labs where they use the techniques learned in Lab I to carry out investigations in an area of their interest. The Department of Biological Sciences has purchased equipment and supplies to establish and upgrade the microscopy, computing, and spectrophotometry resources available. As a result, students are able to get hands-on laboratory experience with equipment that accurately reflects present-day scientific investigation. All of the protocols and reagents developed in these labs are being made available for distribution to colleagues at other institutions. In addition, the students, as part of their second semester projects, post summaries of their project results on the World Wide Web page established for this course. Students are encouraged to further their research experiences, as they have in the past, through summer projects in individual investigator's laboratories.