Being at a school that is currently revising its biology program, I'm interested in folks' opinions on this. I'm especially interested in perspectives on Malcolm's first list item. Specifically, what coursework and/or curricular experiences have people seen that best prepare students for moving into "good" biology-related jobs. ________________________________________ From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [[email protected]] On Behalf Of malcolm McCallum [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 10:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] what makes a biology program good?
I didn't really have anything specific in mind regarding what you listed. In fact, though most general bio programs are divided up in tracts of the programs you listed. I guess I wasn't really looking at specialized programs when I posed the question but graduate or undergraduate, generalized or specialized should not really matter all that much. I hear all of the time people say "That school has a good program" or "that school's program is weak." But really, what makes it good vs weak? I felt it basically boiled down to the following, but wanted to see if others had different or refined views: 1) Coursework is sufficiently rigorous for students to move on into good jobs or postgraduate study. 2) students leaving the program succeed in later pursuits. 3) faculty are trained in the subjects they teach 4) courses have sufficient facilities and resources to be effective 5) courses from other disciplines (chemistry/physics/math, &c) provide suffienct depth for biologists. This is just off the top of my head and pretty open-ended. Malcolm
