After perusing through over 30 academic articles about the ongoing conversation of the development of biological sciences at institutes of higher education, I came across an article titled “Implementing the Recommended Curriculum in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at a Regional Comprehensive University through a Biology/Chemistry Double Major: The Minnesota State University Moorhead Experience” that I found to be incredibly intriguing. While many biologists, college faculty, and national science organizations are calling for a universal reform of undergraduate biology curriculum, one source offered a completely unorthodox idea: offering a program that results in a double major in biology and chemistry.
The completion of the Biochemistry and Biotechnology Emphasis program at Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM) leads to a B.A. degree with a double major in biology and chemistry. This program implements the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s recommended curriculum in biochemistry and molecular biology, and meets the needs of two groups of undergraduate students: those who plan to continue their education at graduate school, and those who plan to enter the workforce in the biotechnology industry. It incorporates inquiry-based and investigative laboratories during all four years of undergraduate study, which has been noted as the greatest benefit of the program in both the quantity and quality of the lab experience. In the six years that this program had been integrated upon the publishing of this article, forty seven students had completed the program. Of these forty seven, twenty students directly entered the workforce, sixteen went on to graduate school, and eleven entered professional school. All feedback from faculty has been extremely positive, and students are no longer trained to be science majors, but fully capable scientists.
This approach provides a very different method of teaching biology and chemistry compared to any of my other sources that I came across. In creating a program that specializes in biochemistry and biotechnology, undergraduates not only obtain a well rounded education in biology and chemistry and their relationships, but a double major. With the results being so extraordinary in the success of students after obtaining their double major, this may prove to be a program that should be seriously considered to implement as an alternative to a biology major or chemistry major.
-FH