Biology Curriculum
The department has聽taken the lead on redesigning and revising our pre-med curriculum to meet the changing 2015 MCAT and聽to address the growing and urgent national problem of declining African American professionals in the field of medicine. With聽the generous support of the聽Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)聽funding of $1 million聽dollars聽to聽the University, Dr. Ireland, Endowed Professor of Biology, led the efforts by working with faculty in Biology and other STEM disciplines to implement specific recommendations issued by the聽Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians聽(SFFP) committee.聽A joint venture between the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the HHMI, the SFFP's goal is to make students more active learners with demonstrated knowledge and ability to聽apply聽the principles of biology, mathematics, and statistics along with those of computer programs, physics, chemistry and biochemistry to human health and diseases.聽
To accomplish this, the department introduced an array of innovative instructional approaches. Two new courses in Biology (Biol 1210L and Biol 1220L) were launched to address self-reported impediments for freshman-level success and labs will be revised to include more discovery/research-oriented projects such as those in Xavier's currently聽HHMI funded 'Phage Genomics' course offered in our department. Several additional pre-med courses have been infused with increased in-class activities, more interdisciplinary content, and exercises to hone students' computational and critical thinking skills with an emphasis on the聽application聽of knowledge as opposed to rote memorization.聽We believe that our new and improved curriculum will help聽all聽our majors to become more competitive and score well on聽whichever聽standardized admissions tests they end up taking (MCAT, GRE, DAT, PCAT, etc).