Science is always evolving, and UIndy’s biology department is evolving by updating its curriculum to address the needs of students, according to Professor and Chair of Biology Sandra Davis. This overhaul seeks to add more flexibility to the major as well as making it more efficient for students to pursue their passions within the discipline, Davis said.
“We’re changing the curriculum because we want to meet the needs of the students, that’s always our first goal,” Davis said. “Biology is a very broad field. We go from DNA molecules all the way up to ecospheres, so there’s lots of different areas that students can specialize in. I think one of the things that we do really well is we try to work with our students to help them figure out what they want to do and how to pursue their goals.”
Along with an updated core, the new curriculum has seven new and updated concentrations including general biology, organismal, cell and molecular, Roche, pre-dental, pre-medical, and pre-veterinary. Davis said offering a variety of concentrations aims to give UIndy biology students a more direct path to achieve their career goals.
Davis said that although the changes were implemented a year ago, updating the curriculum had begun years before 2023. Despite this, Davis said the Covid-19 pandemic caused a delay in the process.
According to the new curriculum guide. These changes have affected more than just the biology department. Some changes involve removing classes that were previously required for all biology majors, specifically chemistry courses, by making them optional.
“Under the old curriculum, students had to take two semesters of organic chemistry and then one semester of a chemistry elective, we’ve opened that up now,” Davis said. “Students under the new curriculum can take a natural science elective, not just in chemistry, but they could take a geology course or another natural science course. Again, depending on what a student wants to do, something might be more useful.”
Associate Professor and Chair of Chemistry David Styers-Barnett said the curriculum is changing to adapt to the needs of students, and hopes these changes will have little impact on the department’s class sizes.
“Chemistry has always been about working with students to help prepare them for what’s next, and we want to make sure we’re preparing the right set of students with the right courses.”
Styers-Barnett said these changes did not come as a surprise to him or the chemistry faculty. He said when a department goes through curriculum changes, it must receive signatures from departments that will be affected, such as getting chemistry’s approval to the changes being made to the biology department. Then changes go through multiple approval processes in various committees that start within the college, and move all the way to the university. Styers-Barnett said this allows other departments to give feedback, input and ask questions about why a department is changing its curriculum.
Styers-Barnett said students who desire a more traditional biology degree still have the option to take these optional courses. For example, biology students who want to pursue medicine can still take the optional chemistry courses. Styers-Barnett also added that the chemistry department is looking to make changes of its own, with a similar goal of offering more flexibility when pursuing a chemistry degree at UIndy.
According to Davis, these changes are occurring at around the same time UIndy’s gen-ed core was revised, and departments across the university are looking for ways to make it easier for students to double major or major and minor in multiple programs across campus. The department believes these changes are a good thing, Davis said, and will hopefully make a biology degree from UIndy more appealing by allowing students to pursue their interests more directly.
