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Appendix D
Rethinking Undergraduate Science
Education: Concepts and Practicalities—
A Traditional Curriculum in a
Changed World
Background Paper by:
Robert T. Yuan (University of Maryland, College Park, and
National Research Council)
Science education at the university level has been based on a number of
premises. Students that have successfully completed a course of study will
have mastery of a scientific discipline. That knowledge should basically be
sufficient to take them through a working life of about 40 years in a given
career track, e.g., industrial research, and project area, e.g., mode of action
of antibiotics. And that career takes place within the boundaries, physical
and intellectual, of one country.
Let us then turn to the world we actually work and live in. Science and
technology are interdisciplinary and most of the work is done by teams
composed of individuals from different disciplines. The half-life of a project
is likely to be on the order of seven years which means that an individual
may have to retool him/herself several times in the course of a working life. It
will also not be uncommon for that individual to have multiple career tracks,
e.g., from academia to industry to venture capital. And new knowledge and
multiple collaborations will move across national borders at warp speed.
Given these circumstances, one must conclude that our educational
system is preparing our graduates for a world that ceased to exist some time
ago. In addition, enrollment in science and engineering in the United States
continues to decrease and the attrition rates are correspondingly high. In a
landmark study by Seymour and Hewitt (2000), it was found that students
that received degrees in the sciences were similar in abilities to those that
had switched majors. Major reasons given for dropping out of the sciences
were the poor quality of the teaching, the sheer boredom of the courses,
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0 Appendix D
and a perception that they had little relevance to any career that would be
of interest to these students.
Under pressure from industry and government, universities and their
faculties have begun to face the need for change in their science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM) curriculums. This has been problematic in
that many of these efforts focus on the restructuring or creation of a course
by an individual professor. This does not necessarily lead to a revision in a
course of study nor in the development of a process for sustainable change.
Not to mention that dissemination and adoption by other institutions hap-
pens rarely and in a random manner.
A NEW EDUCATIONAL FRAMEWORk:
CONCEPTS AND POINTS TO CONSIDER
The fundamental change therefore is to realign the courses with the
world of work which university graduates will enter. A novel educational
framework for STEM would enable students to learn how to acquire and
use an ever-expanding body of knowledge where change is occurring at
breakneck speed. At the same time, it must expose students to the dynamics
of a diverse population, work in teams, and globalization. In a nutshell, it
should enable them to work and live in a changed world.
We will present a holistic curriculum that is composed of two bridging
concepts. The first one is the “Virtual Workplace” that provides students with
a spectrum of thought processes and skills that prepares them for a variety
of scientific and science related careers. The second concept is “Journey
without Maps.” It addresses the challenges associated with the increasing
diversity of our student body and faculty. For many minority students, find-
ing an educational pathway through a puzzling and complex university or
college system is indeed a journey without maps. For nonminority students,
using their education and skills in a culturally heterogeneous and constantly
changing global economy is also a journey without maps.
The change of an existing STEM curriculum into a “Virtual Workplace”
requires us to consider three educational elements: content/process, skills,
work environment.
Content/process: The focus should not be so much the learning of a cer-
tain body of information. It should rather be the learning of information
in relationship to its use for the solution of major scientific problems. The
students should be encouraged to seek information from multiple sources
including texts, primary papers, laboratory manuals, the Internet, dialogue
with specialists. The information should be reviewed critically and be
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Appendix D
interdisciplinary in nature. And the student should understand that the
information will continue to grow and change, and that he/she will con-
tinue to learn throughout his/her working life.
Skills: The classroom environment should provide an opportunity for
students to learn and practice certain fundamental skills, e.g., critical
thinking, teamwork, peer review, experimental manipulations, computer
use, scientific writing, and oral presentations.
Work environment: The tasks assigned in class should mimic those in
the workplace, e.g., a paper describing a project should approximate the
format of a scientific publication or a grant proposal, class work should
be organized around student teams, a project might yield more than one
technical solution or that solution might be an imperfect one though an
improvement on previous knowledge.
“Journey without Maps” addresses the issue of how to practice sci-
ence in a global environment which often involves the interface between
science, economics, and culture. At the same time, the students will face
the challenge of working in teams that will be diverse in terms of gender,
race/ethnicity, class, and educational background. How does one design a
course so that it can effectively deal with:
Globalization: The scientific topics can be presented in the context of
different social, economic and cultural environments. For example, immu-
nological assays represent an excellent solution for the detection of HIV in
blood samples. This procedure is less satisfactory in developing countries
due to reasons of cost, availability of medical personnel, and cultural
resistance to drawing of blood. This leads to the development of alternative
technologies for working with urine or saliva samples.
Diversity in the workplace: The educational process should expose stu-
dents to the experience of working together with students of diverse back-
grounds. This should result in a rational process for arriving at a consensus
and maximizing the contributions of every member of a team. The final
outcome should be representative of a team effort. Role playing can be
invaluable in exploring the value systems of a different group.
Assessment and evaluation: This is an integral component of course and
curriculum change, both as a measure of the effectiveness of the innova-
tions and also as a means of maintaining quality control over time. This
can be done in a manner that is built into the course by tracking perfor-
mance with the increasing difficulty in the tasks and by exit surveys of
the students. The far more difficult evaluation involves the impact of the
new courses on performance in senior level courses and in studies/work
following graduation.
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Appendix D
The concepts and course features described here are designed to give
the student the experience of how a scientist works and thinks in the con-
text of various career tracks. The transformation of the classroom requires a
serious consideration of the points described above. Such an initiative runs
counter to the existing culture in most universities. First, changes occur
mostly at the level of individual courses not of courses of study. Rather
than rethinking all the features of a course, it usually addresses one or two
elements (e.g., introduction of problem sets, new experiments in the lab).
Second, courses that are student centered change the role of the teacher
from being master of the classroom to that of a facilitator or arbiter. Third,
the teacher becomes the architect and builder of the new course with the
resulting investment of time and effort. Fourth, active learning and teamwork
increase the difficulty in assessing student performance and put the teacher
in the position of having to deal with personality conflicts in dysfunctional
teams. Most faculty members are ill prepared to deal with such problems,
and in some cases, they may have chosen science as a way of avoiding
such conflicts.
THE PRACTICALITIES OF IMPLEMENTING CHANGE
The concepts of a “Virtual Workplace” and a “Journey without Maps”
may provide answers for our traditional STEM educational approach. They
might even be exciting and intellectually challenging but at the end of the
day, we have to get real. There are real constraints. Senior administrators
may be supportive of STEM reform but they will warn that it must be done in
a resource-neutral manner. The budgets will remain the same. The demands
for teaching time by faculty will also not change. The objective, however, is
to establish a process that will lead to comprehensive and sustained change
across a series of courses even in the face of such constraints. And as in the
case of quality research, this process should be faculty initiated.
Given these fundamental concepts and the set of constraints, the ques-
tion is how can they be implemented at a research university. This section
describes a case study that involves microbiology courses at the University
of Maryland, College Park, with the participation of roughly 10 faculty mem-
bers over a period of 15 years. The overall scheme allows for the develop-
ment of different courses for various student populations.
• Honors seminars: These are interdisciplinary, cross-cultural courses
with a maximum enrollment of 20 of the university’s best students. These
seminars represent a test bed for the development of new educational
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Appendix D
approaches and teaching materials. If change does not work with very intel-
ligent and highly motivated students, it is unlikely to work with the average
student population.
• Lower level, large enrollment science courses: In many respects,
these courses are built around adaptations of what has been learned in the
honors seminars and reach out to the mainstream of the student body.
• Lower level, general education courses: These courses represent
adaptations for nonscience students and are directed at improving science
literacy and providing an understanding of the culture of science.
• Upper level science courses: These are the specialized courses for
majors and represent a ramping up of the tasks embodied in the concepts
of a “Virtual Workplace” and a “Journey without Maps.”
This array of courses (and students) enables the creation of a sturdy
platform that uses developments in one course to be adapted and applied to
other ones. While the objective is to come up with a number of constructs
that are applicable to all of these courses, we have found that large-scale
introductory lecture/laboratory courses represent a major challenge of their
own. For example, the honors seminars are highly effective in their use of
student-developed case studies, the use of mixed student teams, and role
playing; in a seminar on Traditional Chinese Medicine as a Complementary
Approach to Modern Western Medicine, teams may examine the process of
scientific and clinical validation as applied to acupuncture for pain manage-
ment or the use of specific herbal formulations for chronic conditions such
as arthritis or dermatitis. However, those course characteristics are only
applicable to small classes (i.e., 20 students in the seminars). Major elements
such as teamwork and case studies must be adapted for large introductory
courses. The following issues, while applicable to all courses, had special
difficulties as applied to the introductory courses.
1. How can a course be designed to be interdisciplinary, provide a
window to how scientists work, and give a sense of different career oppor-
tunities? The basic mechanism is a course module that is presented over
a period of several weeks. The module integrates a series of lectures, a
case study, mini-quizzes, and a series of laboratory experiments. The case
study provides a narrative and a major research question, and the student
team needs to find information from multiple sources in order to resolve
it. In a semester, the three modules can provide an insight into three differ-
ent career directions: bacteriology, genetic engineering/biotechnology, and
pathogenesis/medicine.
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Appendix D
2. How do you construct the course so that it integrates learning of basic
concepts, research, and laboratory methods? Each module synchronizes
a set of activities (lectures, readings, mini-quizzes, and laboratory experi-
ments). The case study defines the scientific problem which is then broken
down into smaller bite size elements. Information from the various activities
needs to be accessed and integrated to resolve the case study. This involves
a series of mini-quizzes leading up to a paper at the end of the module and
a test. The students learn that different types of information are needed and
that only some of it is derived from the textbook. The solutions generated
by each team may vary.
3. How can students learn the basic skills that are needed for scien-
tific careers? It is generally accepted that knowledge of various laboratory
manipulations and familiarity with scientific equipment are an important
component of STEM education. There are other skill sets that are equally
important and should be built into the courses such as experimental design,
team work, computer skills, communications (oral and written), and critical
acquisition of information.
4. How can issues of diversity and globalization be addressed? A diverse
workplace presents both opportunities and risks which cannot be ignored.
The use of teams that are mixed by gender, race/ethnicity, field of study,
and grade point average provides a venue for experiencing diversity. Two
important elements in our construct have been the inherent difficulty of
tasks (requiring maximum effort by every member of the team), evaluation
of the task as a team effort, and, finally, peer review in the final grading. The
idea is that the more effective the team, the better the outcome of a project
whether in the lab or the preparation of a paper. One major aspect of global-
ization is in the way that modules and case studies are constructed to give
a broader perspective, e.g., immunomodulators derived from ethnobotany
as an alternative to chemically synthesized drugs as a solution to infectious
diseases.
The case study provides support for a pedagogical platform that imple-
ments the concepts presented earlier and operates within the constraints
of our administrative system. The modification of a set of courses requires
components that are, however, not entirely within the domain of faculty
members and yet are essential for the success of the enterprise. One of these
is evaluation and assessment. Our efforts have focused on building part of
the evaluation process into each course. Each successive task in a course is
ramped up in difficulty so that proficiency at each stage is necessary to do
well in the next one. Class performance in a novel course is compared with
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Appendix D
that of the traditional version and student surveys are conducted at the end
of the semester. Positive results provide some measure of the success of the
reforms. Our teaching team feels reasonably satisfied that it has developed
a functional model for a large enrollment lecture/lab science course. An
early evaluation shows a much higher degree of satisfaction with the new
course as compared with its traditional counterpart. Student performance
is as good or somewhat better.
We do believe that far more valuable indicators would be performance
in successive upper level courses and, ultimately, in graduate/professional
school or the workplace. Such projects are clearly beyond the capacity of
faculty members or even individual departments.
As pointed out earlier, innovations in the STEM curriculum are expected
to be resource neutral, both as regards budget and faculty time. In our case,
the solution has been in the use of course design, teaching teams, and
technology. Course design incorporates team projects, self-assessment, and
peer review which reduces the amount of faculty time involved in grading.
In the large introductory course, we have used teaching teams composed
of faculty who are responsible for lectures, teaching materials, exams, and
overall grading; graduate TAs who deal with the labs and grading of quizzes
and exams, and most importantly, undergraduate TAs who act as facilita-
tors and resource persons (most often in relation to questions arising from
the modules and case studies). So while overall staffing has increased, this
has not had a major impact on budget. Undergraduate TAs are not paid
but receive credits for their time. While faculty time has not increased in
a major manner, it probably results in an increase of 2-4 hours/week. The
course changes cannot be accommodated in the time allotted to lectures
and labs. The use of WebCT allows for a 24/7 access to information and
ongoing discussion and access to the members of the teaching team. Stu-
dent difficulties with concepts or scientific details can be monitored, lead-
ing to real-time adjustments in lectures and lab sessions. Finally, we have
made extensive use of university services: computer expertise (from Office
of Instructional Technology), access to information (Library Services), and
faculty development and assessment (Center for Teaching Excellence). The
use of undergraduate TAs and university services increases the effective
manpower without affecting the course budget.
INDIvIDUAL INITIATIvES, SySTEMIC CHANGE
Changes in the STEM curriculum are typically the result of efforts by
individual professors and groups of faculty. The biggest challenge still
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Appendix D
remains and that is systemic change in a campus and dissemination across
institutions. As described above, major elements of curriculum change need
to be part of the administrative framework in order to maintain momentum
and have sustainability. Assessment and evaluation require resources and
expertise that are usually not available to an individual professor or depart-
ment. Furthermore, the procedures should be common to a college if not
to an entire university (possibly through a campus wide Center of Teach-
ing Excellence). The creation of a course of study involves several linked
courses. Both the knowledge base and skill sets would be ramped up over
a period of three years. Such an effort would require the coordination of
content, case studies/problem-based learning, and strengthening of work
skills across courses. We are just beginning to do this with a group of faculty
that teaches the principal courses in our microbiology curriculum.
While curriculum changes are supposed to be financially neutral, the
cost and effort for reshaping or creating a new course does require additional
funding. Most often that comes from external grant funding. These grants
are usually for two years while the process of establishing a new course and
integrating it into the curriculum is more in the range of three to five years.
And as teaching assignments are rotated, there is no provision for faculty
development as new instructors are assigned to a course. The funding cycles
are not well synchronized with curriculum change.
Even as the curriculum of study for a given major or department under-
goes major restructuring, there is seldom a process of harmonizing this across
the various departments or colleges that are responsible for STEM teaching.
And beyond this is the process of dissemination across different institutions.
One significant national effort has been a summer institute organized by the
National Research Council and the University of Wisconsin–Madison and
supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The purpose of this
five-day institute is to bring together faculty teams from various universities
to learn new pedagogical approaches to undergraduate STEM teaching.
Similar workshops are regularly organized by organizations such as Project
Kaleidoscope and the American Society for Microbiology. These activities
serve to stimulate grassroots initiatives by faculty. There is little evidence
that they lead to systemic change.
A highly educated and skilled workforce lies at the heart of an advanced
post-industrial society. Therefore, effective and efficient teaching should
have pride of place in our universities and colleges. This paper has argued
that we have an increasing understanding of the concepts and tools that can
be used for the creation of effective courses and that this can be done in
different types of institutions. Such efforts require ingenuity, energy, and time
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Appendix D
that are comparable to those that go into quality research. Unfortunately,
the recognition and rewards are not comparable. Creative and sustainable
change cannot be based solely on the initiative and effort of individual fac-
ulty but must be sustained by radical change in the administrative structure
and reward system of our universities and colleges.
There are a number of possibilities as regards systemic change. These
include:
• The creation of a new institute designed to carry out basic research,
graduate training, and undergraduate teaching. The University of Basel
(Switzerland) created the Biozentrum which was central to the creation of
a new Biology II undergraduate curriculum.
• The establishment of a model undergraduate curriculum that includes
textbooks and laboratory experiments which is then disseminated to other
universities in a national system. The University of Wuhan (China) is doing
this in microbiology under the auspices of the Ministry of Education.
• The creation of a new technology university incorporating both new
faculty and curriculums. Hong Kong built the Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology along the lines of a U.S. research university.
These efforts share certain common characteristics: there is a political
will that taps into human and financial resources at a regional and, most
often, at a national level. The creation of large new institutes or universities
also allows for changes in promotion systems and financial rewards. While
there may be analogous initiatives in the United States, our nation differs
from other advanced industrial countries in that it does not have a central-
ized system of education. To put it another way, our system is positioned
for innovative approaches to student learning but lacks a framework for
sustained and systemic change. This country lacks a lead institution or part-
nership that can mobilize ideas and resources at a national level. Neither the
National Science Foundation nor the Department of Education has under-
graduate STEM education as a principal component of its portfolio. The
absence of a national system does not preclude the creation of a systemic
organization for STEM reform that includes its major stakeholders such as
educational institutions, government, and industry (both high-tech employ-
ers and those that play an important role in education such as publishing,
media, and software). Individual initiatives are all important, but the time
has come for systemic development and implementation.
Acknowledgments: The work described in this paper was done in collabora-
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Appendix D
tion with a group of energetic and committed faculty and staff members at the
University of Maryland, College Park, among which are Ann Smith, Richard
Stewart, Patricia Shields, Jennifer Hayes-Klosteridis, Paulette Robinson,
Bonnie Chojnacki, Maynard Mack, Jr. (former director of the University
Honors Program), and Spencer Benson and James Greenberg (director and
former director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, respectively).
