Laboratory and Instructional Innovations in an Interdisciplinary Biochemistry/Biotechnology Program

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This project aims to improve a budding undergraduate program in biochemistry/biotechnology that is already receiving considerable regional interest, to ensure its blossoming into national significance. This aim is being approached by developing and implementing state-of-the-art laboratory sequences in cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, and immunology to augment existing courses and by presenting three-dimensional molecular models in a lecture/discussion setting. The laboratory sequences lend relevance to lectures and illustrate that science is built from bricks of knowledge supported by the pillars of investigative process; the molecular modeling presentations help to ease student understanding of macromolecule structure/function relationships. About 50 undergraduates are directly affected by the main body of this project each year, with another 300, primarily nonscience-majors, receiving additional benefits due to the downward migration of exercises developed for the three courses in question. Several innovative approaches to laboratory design are being used to develop laboratory sequences appropriate and feasible to an intermediately sized program such as this. Some of these approaches are to integrate individual laboratory exercises into continuous projects; to miniaturize exercises, thus reducing reagent and animal use while maximizing results; to replace radioactive tracers with calorimetric or fluorescent ones; and to incorporate, as they become well established and refined, exercises developed for upper-level majors' courses into large classes for nonscience-majors. These innovations not only make it feasible for this institution and those who follow to implement state-of-the-art technology at the undergraduate level, but also begin to address issues of practical concern in biological and chemical education.