With the life sciences advancing at an ever-faster pace, UC Davis should take a whole new approach to teaching core biology courses to undergraduates, says a faculty committee.

Rather than keep adding to the facts that students are required to learn, the Division of Biological Sciences committee is proposing to create a new core curriculum that aims to teach students to "think like biologists" so they can interpret new information for themselves.

In a proposal with far-reaching implications across the campus and beyond, six new courses would replace the current seven core courses -- introductory biology BIS 1A through 1 C and upper-division courses BIS 101 through 104 -- that all division majors must complete.

Committee members say the current core courses, while repeatedly updated and well taught, are still built on older models of biology that are no longer adequate for the 21st century.

"When I was an undergraduate, you could know something about everything in biology through an undergraduate education -- and you could know all the important things," said Martin Wilson, a professor in the Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and chair of the core-curriculum review committee.

That is no longer possible, Wilson said. "In the last 10 years, the amount of information in biology has exploded. The number of facts will continue to grow enormously.

"We have to give (students) the skills, the tools to organize information, interpret it and determine what's useful. That's a more difficult thing to do. It's much easier to give students facts than teach them to think. That's really what we're talking about -- teaching students to think like biologists."

The new core sequence would be built around the themes of genes and genomics, and evolution and diversity. Committee members, representing a cross-section of biology, say those themes provide a common language to integrate all levels of biology. Among other aims of the proposed core is giving students: an integrated view of all levels of biology; critical thinking skills; exposure to mathematical modeling in biology; experience working in teams; and a chance to begin introductory biology their freshman year, instead of waiting until they finish a year of chemistry as is currently required.

Students would take the courses in a sequence. Teams of faculty members would teach them.

In addition to revamping the core, committee members also recommended the division review its calculus, chemistry, physics and statistics requirements for bachelor of science degrees in biology. They suggested changes be added to better meet the needs of contemporary biology students.

The proposed new biology core would have ripple effects across the campus. It would also make UC Davis one of the first universities in the country to revamp its biology curriculum in such a fundamental way.

Close to 4,000 students are currently enrolled in the division's nine biology majors. A number of other undergraduate degrees across campus require one or more of the core biology courses. Last academic year, total enrollment for the core courses was 8,825 students. Of those, 45 percent were from outside the Division of Biological Sciences.

Division of Biological Sciences faculty members will get a chance to discuss the proposal at a town-hall meeting 1-3 p.m. Thursday, May 29, in Room 1022, Life Sciences Addition.

Phyllis Wise, dean of biological sciences, sent an e-mail message encouraging all division faculty members to attend. "These changes, if adopted, would ... have knock-on effects requiring that subsequent courses taken by students would have to be modified. In short, all faculty in the division would be affected by these changes."

As part of curriculum discussion, the committee also invited David Botstein, a Stanford University genetics professor and a leading proponent of modernizing biology instruction, to talk on campus Tuesday, May 20, on "Thinking about Curriculum in the Post Genome Sequence Era."

Botstein previously developed the undergraduate biology curriculum at MIT. He will be leaving Stanford this year for Princeton University, where he will direct a genomics institute and implement a radical new approach to teaching biology to undergraduates.

Committee members are also seeking feedback from faculty members in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, College of Letters and Science, and College of Engineering. The report and related documents are online at http://dbs.ucdavis.edu/undergrad/internal/review.html. Comments can be posted there as well.

However, the committee is asking colleagues who want to add other subject areas to suggest what to delete in exchange. "It's a zero-sum game," said Jay Stachowicz, an assistant professor in the Section of Evolution and Ecology. "If something comes in, we've got to pick something else that needs to come out."

Tom Rost, executive associate dean of biological sciences, said two things prompted the core-curriculum review. Students began complaining about the unit values of the upper-division core courses. And some of the division's five academic sections asked to substitute other courses for their majors.

An external review, conducted last spring by Martin Feder of the University of Chicago and Gordon Uno of the University of Oklahoma, gave an A-grade to the division's undergraduate program. "DBS currently offers an undergraduate program of great distinction," they wrote in their report. "Its faculty (members) are superb researchers and educators who are strongly committed to excellence in education."

However, the external reviewers said the core curriculum seemed to lack an "overarching shared vision of what education in the life sciences should be and should accomplish"

Last fall, Rost asked eight division faculty members, representing a cross-section of biological sciences, to determine "what the goals of our core biology curriculum should be to prepare our students for the 21st century.

"The committee was purposely selected to be made up of senior faculty, junior faculty, some who have taught in the core and some who had not," he said. "The committee functioned very well and went off in many unexpected directions."

Just as the committee was getting started, the National Research Council released the report, "BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists." The report said biology education nationwide has failed to keep pace with the revolution in the biological sciences. It said colleges and universities should revamp how they teach their biology majors.

Wilson said the UC Davis's biology core was put in place when the Division of Biological Sciences reorganized in the early 1990s. "Even then, it was not put together from any consideration of first principles. It was cobbled together from existing courses -- and at the lower division these were survey courses of botany, zoology and microbiology. Although they have been modified, you can still see the resemblance of those original classes."

"Some of the fundamental issues within biology don't appear anywhere in the curriculum," Wilson said. "Right now, students get very little of genomics."

Committee members said change is inevitable in biology education across the country, and that UC Davis has an opportunity to lead the nation. "We can either be on the forefront or the trailing edge," Stachowicz said.

He said committee members also strongly believed that biology majors should be starting biology courses their first year. "We viewed it as a missed opportunity to get students excited about biology as they enter the university."

Rick Grosberg, a professor of evolution and ecology who also served on the committee, said he anticipates complaints from some colleagues and students. "But I haven't heard a strong intellectual argument against it. The current curriculum is gradually falling to bits because students aren't learning about biology as it is now, how important it is to be quick on your feet, to collaborate, to know what the right questions are to ask."

A new core will require Academic Senate approval. Wilson predicted it would take 1 to 2 years before the new courses begin, first on a pilot basis. The transition would be gradual, with continuing students getting a choice of finishing the curriculum under which they started.

The committee recommended a faculty member be appointed to organize and oversee the core curriculum. Wilson has agreed to do that job for two years. He said, in addition to requiring development of complete new lesson plans and laboratories, the proposed core will pose a number of practical problems.

The proposed core takes such a new approach -- starting with genes and genomes and building up -- that there may be no textbooks yet to match the courses, committee members say.

And because students must take the core courses as a sequence, that will present new challenges in scheduling classrooms and instructors, Wilson said.

Other issues to work out include how to place students who transfer from community colleges or from other university campuses. "I'm optimistic that these problems can be solved," Wilson said.

William DeBello, an assistant professor in the Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, agreed. "The goal is to turn out better students," he said. "I think that's the bottom line. If the DBS faculty agrees that this revision will achieve that goal, then the time and effort will be well spent."