This project adds equipment to support a restructured General Biology course for science majors. Over the past two years, the Biology Department has successfully revised the two-semester General Biology course to focus around themes, to be less lecture intensive, and to emphasize student-directed research projects. Enrollment has increased from an average of 54 students per semester to 80, and the retention rate of biology majors has increased. While development of an experiential, investigative, hands-on approach to science has been successful, labs had insufficient equipment to support the semester-long research projects that had been integrated into the course structure. This project creates six workstations for use by each of the lab sections of 20 students. Each workstation is used by teams of three to four students. Each team is provided with a Ph meter, a spectrophotometer, stereo microscopes with dual illumination, a top loader balance, and a Macintosh Power PC. In addition, a new incubator and two growth chambers are available to all project teams and, when not in use, to other biology majors conducting research projects.
