The development and implementation of a new medical biology major including physiology

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara E. Goodman ◽  
Karen L. Koster ◽  
David L. Swanson

In response to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Association of American Medical Colleges Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians (SFFP) report and a concern for better preparing undergraduates for future doctoral programs in the health professions, the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences and Division of Basic Biomedical Sciences of Sanford School of Medicine of the University of South Dakota formed an ad hoc Premedical Curriculum Review Committee with representatives from the science departments and medical school. The Committee began by reviewing the university's suggested premedical curriculum and matching it to the proposed competencies from the SFFP to document duplications and deficiencies. The proposed changes in the Medical College Admission Test for 2015 were also evaluated. The Committee proposed a stronger premedical curriculum, with the development of some new courses, including an inquiry-based physiology course with team-based learning, to more fully address SFFP competencies. These analyses convinced the university that a new major would best help students achieve the competencies and prepare them for admission exams. Thus, a new Medical Biology major was proposed to the South Dakota Board of Regents and accepted for its initial offering in 2012. The new major has been broadly advertised to future students and is successful as a recruiting tool for the university. This article details the process of evaluating the curriculum and designing the new major, describes some of the difficulties in its implementation, and reviews outcomes from the new major to date.

Author(s):  
Frank Blanchard

The door swung wide open and a dozen faces turned my way. The interview was for a science education story, but now it felt like a surprise party and I was the guest of honor. I had never been greeted for an interview by so many people. Here was a crowd around a long table. At the head was a woman with a big smile welcoming me to Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. My traveling companion, a consultant experienced in representing charities, private foundations, and other nonprofit organizations, took this in stride and spoke right up. He introduced us as representatives of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, which at the time was the nation's largest philanthropy, a $5.2 billion enterprise. The Institute had given this relatively small college, which led the nation in sending black students to medical school, a $1.8 million grant to support its undergraduate science program. Xavier, the only historically black Catholic university in the United States, was doing something extraordinary. We wanted to tell the story. As a science writer for the Institute, I had made arrangements to interview the faculty member who ran the program and a few participating students for anecdotes to enliven the story. I thought I had made this clear on the telephone weeks before the trip, but the program director had other ideas. She had built an itinerary that could have stood as a first-class defense of the grant. Faculty members, support staff, anyone who could bolster the case for funding was in the room. After meeting with the group, I was to speak with the university president and others, later I would have a chance to talk with students. It was going to be a long day. It was also going to be a waste of time. We were there to gather specific information for a news article. We were not there to monitor progress under the grant. We had no money to offer them, and we were in no position to cut their funding. Finally, as this began to sink in, the teachers headed back to their classrooms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (22) ◽  
pp. 2608-2610
Author(s):  
Ahna R. Skop

I am deeply honored to receive the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Prize for Excellence in Inclusivity made possible through a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. This generous award of $5000 will go toward travel and registration support for underrepresented students from the University of Wisconsin–Madison to attend the ASCB and SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science) conferences. In this essay, I have woven together a few stories on how my life experiences have shaped my passion for diversity and inclusion in STEM.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik J. Henriksen ◽  
Anne E. Atwater ◽  
Nicholas A. Delamere ◽  
William H. Dantzler

The American Physiological Society (APS) and APS Council encourage the teaching of physiology at the undergraduate, graduate, and medical school levels to support the continued prominence of this area of science. One area identified by the APS Council that is of particular importance for the development of future physiologists (the “physiology pipeline”) is the teaching of physiology and physiology-related topics at the undergraduate level. In this article, we describe the historical development and implementation of an undergraduate program offered through the Department of Physiology, a basic science department in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, culminating in a Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences degree with a major in Physiology. Moreover, we discuss the current Physiology curriculum offered at our institution and explain how this program prepares our students for successful entry into a variety of postbaccalaureate professional programs, including medical school and numerous other programs in health professions, and in graduate study in the Masters and Doctoral programs in biomedical sciences. Finally, we cover the considerable challenges that we have faced, and continue to face, in developing and sustaining a successful physiology undergraduate major in a college of medicine. We hope that the information provided on the Physiology major offered by the Department of Physiology in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona will be helpful for individuals at other institutions who may be contemplating the development and implementation of an undergraduate program in Physiology.


2021 ◽  
pp. 282-303
Author(s):  
Danian Hu

This chapter explores the development of the department of physics at Yenching University, an American-funded missionary institution in Beijing, China during the Republican period. It shows how the department evolved from a primitive premedical teaching program to a major center of physics education and research. It also reveals the significant role of the Rockefeller Foundation in this development, partly as the sponsor of the Premedical School of Peking Union Medical College. Founded in 1917, the Premedical School shared with Yenching’s science departments its advanced facilities and in 1926 became part of the university. In 1927, the department created a Master of Science program in physics, the first of its kind in China, promoting original research among its faculty and students. Before the Japanese army shut down the university in December 1941, more than ninety Chinese young men and women had completed their study in this department with a research thesis. A considerable number of Yenching graduates went on to earn their doctorates in America or Europe and subsequently returned home, becoming leading physicists in China in the twentieth century. Among them, Kun Huang (黃昆‎, Class 1941) and Chia-Lin Hsieh (謝家麟‎, Class 1943) even won the State Preeminent Science and Technology Awards, the highest scientific honor in China, in 2001 and 2011 respectively.


2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Roland-Lévy

Abstract: The aim of doctoral programs in psychology is to help students become competent psychologists, capable of conducting research and of finding suitable employment. Starting with a brief description of the basic organization of the French university system, this paper presents an overview of how the psychology doctoral training is organized in France. Since October 2000, the requisites and the training of PhD students are the same in all French universities, but what now differs is the openness to other disciplines according to the size and location of the university. Three main groups of doctoral programs are distinguished in this paper. The first group refers to small universities in which the Doctoral Schools are constructed around multidisciplinary seminars that combine various themes, sometimes rather distant from psychology. The second group covers larger universities, with a PhD program that includes psychology as well as other social sciences. The third group contains a few major universities that have doctoral programs that are clearly centered on psychology (clinical, social, and/or cognitive psychology). These descriptions are followed by comments on how PhD programs are presently structured and organized. In the third section, I suggest some concrete ways of improving this doctoral training in order to give French psychologists a more European dimension.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (07) ◽  
pp. 20484-20491
Author(s):  
Dr. Ishag Adam Hassan Ahmed

This paper is devoted to presenting the methods in English communicating skills for Learners of English in general and the problems specific to University of Bahri. English language major’s graduates then; it discusses the notion of communicative competence, and defines strategic competence. It also briefly deals with the various definitions of communication strategies and taxonomies of conversation strategies. Also, I give brief definition of the word conversation, that is the act of talking together or exchange ideas, opinions, skills, and information. As accustomed, speaking is natural and automatic but communication is an art which must be learned and practiced. Also the aim of this paper is to present you with suitable suggestions about how you can solve problems while reading English? In order to comply with this objective: we considered two variables. The first one is that within our daily practice at the university we have students with different abilities while reading English. Therefore, we need to help them increase the ability in reading comprehension. However, we don’t have enough teachers and needed resources to supply them with the help they need. The second variable is related to the fact that at University there are different centers where the students’ skills can improve and their reading comprehension skills deficiencies could be overcome by getting help from the teachers. This study is small component of a larger curriculum review exercise. The findings of study in general suggest that both students and English language lecturers were in agreement that Sudanese students had a problem in writing and speaking English and due to that the conversational problems are raised.      Finally, the paper concludes by representing the pedagogical implications of conversation strategies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. David Plumlee ◽  
Philip M. J. Reckers

SYNOPSIS: In 2005, an ad hoc committee appointed by the American Accounting Association (AAA) documented a crisis-level shortage of accounting Ph.D.s and recommended significant structural changes to doctoral programs (Kachelmeier, Madeo, Plumlee, Pratt, and Krull 2005). However, subsequent studies show that the shortage continues and the cumulative costs grow (e.g., Fogarty and Holder 2012; Brink, Glasscock, and Wier 2012). The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) recently called for renewed attention to the problem (AACSB 2013b). We contribute to the literature by providing updated information regarding responses by doctoral programs and, from the eyes of potential candidates, of continuing impediments to solving the doctoral shortage. In this paper, we present information gathered through surveys of program administrators and master's and Accounting Doctoral Scholars Program (ADS) students. We explore (1) the cumulative impact of the Ph.D. shortage as of 2013, including its impact on accounting faculty composition, across different types of institutions, (2) negative student perceptions of Ph.D. programs and academic accounting careers, which discourage applicants from pursuing Ph.D. programs, and (3) impediments facing institutions in expanding doctoral programs.


Author(s):  
Sebastián Videla ◽  
Aurema Otero ◽  
Sara Martí ◽  
M. Ángeles Domínguez ◽  
Nuria Fabrellas ◽  
...  

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic started in December 2019 and still is a major global health challenge. Lockdown measures and social distancing sparked a global shift towards online learning, which deeply impacted universities’ daily life, and the University of Barcelona (UB) was not an exception. Accordingly, we aimed to determine the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic at the UB. To that end, we performed a cross-sectional study on a sample of 2784 UB members (n = 52,529). Participants answered a brief, ad hoc, online epidemiological questionnaire and provided a nasal swab for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) SARS-CoV-2 analysis and a venous blood sample for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody assay. Total prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection (positive RT-PCR or positive IgG) was 14.9% (95%CI 13.3 to 17.0%). Forty-four participants (1.6%, 95%CI: 1.2–2.1%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR. IgG against SARS-CoV-2 was observed in 12.8% (95%CI: 11.6–14.1%) of participants. Overall, while waiting for population vaccination and/or increased herd immunity, we should concentrate on identifying and isolating new cases and their contacts.


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