[FUN_Mail] Question about overlap in courses for a neuroscience major

Tue Sep 23 10:11:43 EDT 2014

We had a similar problem at Viterbo when our Biopsychology major was created. At that time the only neuroscience-related courses were upper-level and our psychology majors (50% of the students) had a very difficult time with the material and seriously lagged behind the BIOP and BIOL majors. This resulted in a simplification of the material such that the course was upper-level in name but lower-level in content... not optimal.

Ultimately we created a lower-level intro/lab course that serves as a prerequisite for our upper-level offerings and fulfills the "biological basis of behavior" requirement for the PSYC majors. This has worked very well for us although the trade-off is fewer students in the upper-level courses because these are not required for PSYC majors. However, the students in the upper-level courses are now guaranteed to have received introductory education and are much more prepared for the challenges of 300- and 400-level coursework.

Best of luck!

-Dave

--------------------------------------
David J. Bauer, Ph.D.
Viterbo University
608-796-3712
djbauer at viterbo.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: FUN_Mail [mailto:fun_mail-bounces at lists.funfaculty.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kennedy via FUN_Mail
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 9:00 AM
To: Lorig, Tyler
Cc: fun_mail at lists.funfaculty.org
Subject: Re: [FUN_Mail] Question about overlap in courses for a neuroscience major

Same issues here at Denison, where Neuroscience is a "concentration" (not a major, more than a minor).  For example, there is (necessarily?) some overlap between our Introductory Neuroscience (Neur 200; an overview course covering the basics--first seven chapters in Bear's book) course and my 300-level Biological Psychology course.  We had some issues a few years back with students who enrolled in BioPsych prior to N200 (couldn't be helped; scheduling demands); since then, we have worked hard to make certain that students take these courses in their proper and logical sequence.

I will say, however, that overlap is not necessarily a bad thing.
Neuroanatomy, in my view, is something students NEED to hear in different contexts, more than once, in different courses.

This is an interesting and important discussion, and I look forward to hearing from others!!

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Lorig, Tyler via FUN_Mail < fun_mail at lists.funfaculty.org> wrote:

> Hello Rick!
>
> We have been doing this quite a while at W&L and also have a great 
> deal of overlap...As long as the courses serve multiple curricula, I 
> don't think there is a way around having more overlap than 
> needed...You can improve the situation by putting all the neuroscience 
> program faculty in a room and discussing the lecture schedule in 
> required courses and asking if anyone else is covering that info...If 
> one faculty member knows the info is being covered elsewhere, it may 
> free them up to reduce the time on that topic or change their 
> approach. For us, the overlap is action potentials...everyone covers this a little but there is really only one required course where
> students get a lot of depth.   We are willing to let this stand because the
> redundancy only lasts a couple of days in class and isn't a bad 
> reminder...We also use very different approaches to teaching the same 
> info and those perspectives are, I think, good for the students to see.
>
> All the best to you and your colleagues at Hendrix!
>
> Tyler
>
>
> -------------------------------------
> Tyler S. Lorig, Ph.D.
> Ruth Parmly Professor and
> Chair, Neuroscience Program
> Washington and Lee University
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 22, 2014, at 2:42 PM, Murray, Rick via FUN_Mail < 
> fun_mail at lists.funfaculty.org<mailto:fun_mail at lists.funfaculty.org>>
> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>
>
>  We are in the process of developing an interdisciplinary neuroscience 
> major here at Hendrix College and we are faced with a problem of too 
> much overlap in content in our core courses. Since we are a program 
> and not a department, all of our faculty and most of our courses have 
> homes in different departments (biology, psychology, philosophy 
> etc...). Due to limited resources we plan to use many of these 
> existing courses in our major (eg. Cellular and Molecular 
> neurobiology, behavioral neuroscience etc...), but that means that the 
> courses will serve two masters. Once the major is introduced, these 
> courses will be populated with a combination of neuroscience majors 
> and also majors from our home departments. Neuroscience majors will 
> know basic neuroscience concepts from our intro course but majors from 
> our home departments will not. That means that each course will have 
> to introduce basic concepts for non-neuroscience majors but the neuroscience majors will hear this material in 4 or 5 different courses.
> Unfortunately we can't make the introductory neuro course a 
> prerequisite for the others or we'll essentially be preventing our 
> non-neuroscience majors from taking it (they won't have room in their 
> schedule for both courses). We suspect that others may have faced this 
> problem and would like to ask; how did you deal with it?
>
>
>
> Rick
>
> Richard Murray
> Chair, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Program Chair, Neuroscience 
> Program Judy and Randy Wilbourn Odyssey Associate Professor of Biology 
> Hendrix College
> 1600 Washington Ave
> Conway, AR 72032
>
> Phone: 501-450-4588
>
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--
Susan Kennedy-Davis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology Neuroscience Concentration Coordinator Denison University Granville, OH  43023 MAILMAN_MIMEDEFANG WRAP _______________________________________________
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