University Advancement

Public Relations and Strategic Communications

NEWS RELEASE

CSUN to Launch New Biology 100 Course in Fall 2007

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., May 18, 2007) — A new Biology 100 course will premier at Cal State Northridge this fall 2007, the result of a top-to-bottom overhaul—the first in some 20 years—that aims to make the course more relevant, exciting and accessible to the 2,000-plus non-majors who annually select it as one of their general education (GE) requirements for graduation.

Fall 2007 enrollees will be presented with a fresh lecture concept, a focus on "hands-on" laboratory learning, a system of computer virtual labs and online lectures that students can access from anywhere.

In the process, the small group of imaginative faculty biologists currently re-working the course also has found a way to significantly increase the number of students able to enroll in it every year. Their solution also addresses incoming Bio 100 students’ need to take more lab units, a new GE requirement that had left the department with a lab space dilemma.

"Historically, the popular Biology 100 course with dozens of sections has enrolled between 2,000 and 2,200 non-majors annually," said department chair Larry Allen, who pushed for the overhaul. "Our team has developed a course hybrid design that will enable the department to accommodate at least 2,400 per year. The unhappy prospect of having to join a section waiting list will diminish appreciably, then, for many."

A major investment of sweat equity in the Bio 100 re-construction has been made by professor and Faculty President Jennifer Matos; special consultant/lecturer Janet Kübler; William Krohmer, the department’s manager of technical services and safety; assistant professor Cindy Malone; lecturers Jeff Thomas, Greg Fox and Michael Franklin; instructional support technician James Hogue, and part-time faculty Lynn Haugen.

In the new hybrid lab design, Kübler said a student will spend half of his or her time "in a hands-on wet lab experience with living things," and half in computer lab activities and simulations.

Space in the present lab configurations will be freed up because half of the course’s required laboratory work can be done independently, online from home or in a campus biology computer lab. Instead of one group monopolizing a wet lab for weeks on end, groups will rotate from lab to lab in a rich, constantly interactive cycle of learning.

"This was a wonderful opportunity to update the whole freshman lab concept," said Matos, faculty advisor with oversight of freshman laboratories. Matos added that labs also will be retooled to handle the different kinds of experiments non-majors will do in the new Bio 100.

Janet Kübler said it is important for students to discover the fun of examining living things interacting and growing, and to take that experience into the rest of their lives and the world beyond classes.

"Everything else, from record-keeping to data and recording chores, will be done on the computer," said Kübler, "saving time for other activities in the wet lab. It’s a way of most efficiently using lab space."

Working in close coordination with the company that supplies the lab manual used in CSUN’s Bio 100, William Krohmer is streamlining lab activities and arranging to outfit the department’s computer labs with Bio 100 software, so that students can do their simulated lab work on campus or log in from home.

"The Biology 100 lecture component also has needed a major update for years," said Cindy Malone, who jumped in as a key project leader despite the fact that in 2005 she was new to CSUN—with a baby born just two weeks after her first semester began.

Judging previous lecture texts to be less than friendly to non-majors, Malone and colleague Jeff Thomas launched a search for a new one, settling on "Biology: Science for Life," by Colleen Belk and Virginia Borden, and using it to design a custom, cost-saving book that will use only the chapters needed for CSUN’s course.

They will be using the new text to share "things that will be applicable to students’ lives, what they eat, their health, how not to ruin our world. We’ll be tying lectures to the real world, so they don’t just have to take the classes and memorize," Malone said. Her section will function as the lead for all Bio 100 sections, accessible to all of its instructors.

Online lectures began in fall 2006 as the redesign got underway, but in fall 2007 students’ online lecture resources will expand with a custom Web site linked to the course, voluminous individual lecture notes, Power Point presentations, self-quizzes, extra reading assignments in topical subjects such as stem cell research and sexually transmitted diseases, links to a learning resource center and to math/science tutoring.

Malone also will add a community service-learning "trial run" component in her fall 2007 section, for 80 to 100 students working through the MOSAIC (Mentoring to Overcome Struggles and Inspire Courage) program.

"People need to make educated decisions about lots of things that are scientific these days," she said. Whether a student’s relative gets cancer or the student discovers he has an STD, "everyone needs biology. Our idea is to deliver it in a way that it’s not so painful to get the information you need. It can be fun."