January 2003 - Division of Medical Sciences Bulletin - Harvard ...

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The Harvard University BBS website: January Bulletin BBS Calendar BBS Bulletin Staff BBS Home Page This Issue Current Issue Previous Issues Articles by Category ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● BBS Events Boston Eating Extracurricular Faculty Profiles Grad Student Life Housing Science Science and Society Women in Science Volume VII, Number 1 - January 2003 More Courses Coming Soon By: Jennifer Weaver Many BBS Students, myself included, were quite surprised to open their course information packets last semester and find that there were only three quarter courses being offered, one of which was subsequently cancelled. This prompted some discussion regarding the number of courses offered to students, and the course requirements in general. The good news is that changes are on the way for the course catalog, with several new courses being offered in the near future, and plans to develop additional courses in the coming years. I spoke with one of our program heads, Connie Cepko, about the shortage of courses. Cepko said that the program is aware of the need, and is working on developing additional courses. Initial steps included informing faculty members of this need, and encouraging them to teach new courses. Cepko is also planning to meet with new faculty members and suggest teaching quarter courses as a great way to become a part of the BBS community. These steps seem to be working, as one new quarter course, "Replication Checkpoints and the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle," will be offered this spring by Johannes Walter and Alan D'Andrea. New full semester courses are also coming soon to a classroom near you, and will be developed mainly on a department by department basis. The Genetics department discovered the need for more upper level Genetics courses when they observed that their current courses were oversubscribed. They plan to meet this need by offering two new full semester courses. One is a Mammalian Genetics course being taught by David Beier that will have some lecture and discussion, and will be mouse centric. The file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/JJL21/Desktop/bulletin/2003/WebonlyJanuary2003/courses.html (1 of 3)11/13/2006 10:28:42 AM
The Harvard University BBS website: January Bulletin other will be a Developmental Genetics and Genomics course, taught by Gary Ruvkin, Mark Vidal and Norbert Perrimon, which will discuss using classical genetic approaches and genomics to answer developmental questions. Other departments will hopefully find similar ways to develop courses to fill students' needs. Additionally, we may see more upper level semester-long discussion courses offered. These courses will take less planning on the part of faculty members, as there will be few if any lectures to plan, and will also be satisfying for students, many of whom enjoy learning in this type of structured discussion setting. While the number of courses offered is increasing, why are eight courses required in the first place? According to Cepko, this is not the way the program was originally designed. When the BBS program began, the original requirement was for six courses. The thought process was that students could complete their work in the core courses, and still have one elective they could use to take an upper level course. With only one elective to "spend" however, there were only a limited number of students available to fill the large number of available spaces in upper level courses. Many wonderful upper level courses offered were eventually lost because they were not populated with students. In order to counter this problem, the program had to up the course requirement to find a steady state between the number of students available to take upper level courses and the number of different courses offered. The number that worked best was to require eight courses. This provides students with an education that has both breadth and depth, which the faculty believes is the best possible training. There is much that students can do to help this process along. In the spring, there are feedback meetings for G1 and G2 students to discuss ways to improve current courses, and suggest new courses to faculty members. Attendance at the meeting will ensure that your voice will be heard! In addition, any student who has a course suggestion can email Connie Cepko or Bob Kingston, who head up the curriculum committee. Cepko said that there are many faculty members who are interested in teaching, but they don't know what students are interested in learning about. Knowing what students want will make it easier to fill that need. All suggestions of courses will be heard, however suggestions most likely to become a reality will be those supported by several students. [ back to top ] file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/JJL21/Desktop/bulletin/2003/WebonlyJanuary2003/courses.html (2 of 3)11/13/2006 10:28:42 AM
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