Newsgroups: sci.bio
Path: utzoo!utgpu!lamoran
From: lamoran@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (L.A. Moran)
Subject: Introductory biology
Message-ID: <1991Apr29.163115.2113@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCS Public Access
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1991 16:31:15 GMT




Marc Roussel writes,

     "I must have been extraordinarily unclear in my original posting.
      I guess I thought that "service course" was standard terminology.
      By a service course, I mean things like "Physics for the Life 
      Sciences" or "Mathematics for Commerce", i.e. non-specialist
      introductory. I've honestly never heard of a service Biology
      course."

I did not recognize that Marc was excluding biology courses from his
definition of "service courses". It is not clear to me why he has never
heard of a "service" biology course since at most universities the 
introductory biology course is the largest such course on campus. Most
non-science students take biology to fulfill their science requirement so
this means that a large number of students in introductory biology are
not even science majors.

At the University of Toronto we do not have a biology department and the
large introductory biology courses are taught by members of the Zoology
and Botany departments. In my experience most lecturers in biology courses
feel that they are mainly engaged in teaching non-biologists, including
chemists and physicists. I think that biology qualifies as a "service"
course by Marc's own definition.

Marc also says,

     "What I mostly wanted to hear from this forum is whether those of
      us outside Biology should continue to try to provide such courses
      since, in my opinion, we're not doing a great job at it (for
      whatever reason).  Are there alternative ways of delivering the
      core curriculum in (say) physical chemistry to biologists that 
      don't involve extra-departmental service courses?"

In my opinion the biologists should take the same physical chemistry course
as the physicists and the chemists. Also there should be only one biology
course for all students. Unfortunately few universities have the resources
to mount such courses effectively so for the foreseeable future we will have
to continue to offer "watered down" versions of some introductory courses
for large numbers of non-majors. How sad.

-Larry Moran
Dept. of Biochemistry