A good source of information could come from the "consumers" rather than the "sellers". So a good source for digging into it should be the national or regional education assessments. This of course is a "country" sensitive issue, and whether or not such assessments exist is a matter. >From my personal experience I will add "flexibility", as one required item in a good program, or perhaps a more comprehensive word would be "adaptation", because all the wonderful items listed by Malcolm, will be really booster if adaptation to the external environment (e.g. changing tendencies, discoveries and needs) is ensured.
Perhaps my views are too generalists, but are based on my experience from Latin America. Eric 2010/11/12 Aimee Phillippi <[email protected]> > 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 > -- Eric Flores De G. """""""NO EXCUSES...EXECUTE"""""
