breast cancer research • mcb as pre-med - The School of Molecular ...

to medical school
and a degree in Molecular and cellular biology is one of the best roads to take.
While the MCB undergraduate degree provides a strong academic foundation for a variety
of careers in the health sciences — including academic and industrial research, dentistry,
veterinary medicine, nursing, immunology, pharmaceuticals, forensics — preparation for the
Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and medical school is built into the curriculum.
In fact, of the students admitted to medical school from the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign in 2009, the majority graduated from the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology
(majoring in MCB or biochemistry). The major with the next-largest number of matriculating
medical school students (the collected majors in the College of Engineering) sent one
fifth as many students to medical school as did MCB. The University of Illinois boasts a 49%
acceptance rate for entering medical school students — three points above the national average.
As articulated in last year’s report (see sidebar), the medical mind must do more than identify
and treat disease: it must be multi-talented. The outstanding physician of the new millennium
will be a well-rounded scholar with strengths in science, communication, technology,
logic, and cultural sensitivity.
According to Ronald Epstein and Ed Hundert, 1 “Competency is the habitual and judicious
use of communication, knowledge, technical skills, clinical reasoning, emotions, values, and
reflection in daily practice for the benefit of the individual and the community being served.”
MCB courses teach both scientific content and competency in broader skills, for example
writing, speaking, teamwork, research, and analysis.
MCB — a 13-year-old school built on the University of Illinois’ long-standing tradition of
distinguished life sciences research and education — delivers a strong foundational curriculum
while remaining agile and able to adapt to the breakneck pace of scientific discovery.
A cutting-edge undergraduate program in a fast-changing scientific field, MCB continually
evolves to meet the needs of majors and their futures.
In April 2010 the MCB Instructional Program unveiled a new two-semester lecture and lab
course sequence in Human Anatomy & Physiology. These courses will integrate human anatomy
and physiology with pathology and disease processes from the organismal to the subcellular
level. The streamlined design will provide our majors and non-majors with a superior,
meaningful, integrated, and comprehensive learning experience in anatomy and physiology.
Another recent innovation is our expansion of the course “Genetics and Human Disease”
under the leadership of Professor Mary Schuler, providing important background to inherited
diseases and personalized medicine.
With MCB’s opportunity for real laboratory training (see MCB issues 2 and 3), and newly
redesigned anatomy, physiology, and genetics courses, the path to medical school has never
been better paved. •
1 Epstein, Ronald and Hundert, Ed. “Defining and Assessing Professional Competence.” JAMA. 2002;287:226-235.
In MCB, we were pleased to see Scientific
Foundations for Future Physicians, a 2009
Report of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute and the Association of American
Medical Colleges. We are in agreement with
this report: our degree program fuses scientific
rigor with a true liberal arts education.
According to the report: “there is widespread
agreement that it is important to: (1) educate
future physicians to be inquisitive; (2) help
them build a strong scientific foundation for
future medical practice; and (3) equip them
with the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind
to integrate new scientific discovery into their
medical practice throughout their professional
lives and to share this knowledge with
patients and other health care professionals.”
the report concludes: “A competency-based
approach should give...flexibility in the
premedical curriculum to allow undergraduate
institutions to develop more interdisciplinary
and integrative courses that maintain
scientific rigor, while providing a broad
and strong liberal arts education. Entering
medical students should be more evenly
prepared for the study of medicine, allowing
medical schools to spend less time teaching
or reviewing the basic competencies and
more time learning the growing scientific
knowledge base needed to practice modern
medicine.“
SCHOOL OF MOLECULAR AND CELLULAR BIOLOGY . 3