9452613 Toll This project is supports recent curricular reform in biology by introducing undergraduate students to modern, experimental research technologies and techniques in the study of animal systems. In improvements to laboratory instruction of physiology, students will use Macintosh computers, fitted with hardware/software interfaces, transducers, and signal conditioners, to function as virtual oscilloscopes and chart recorders. Experiments based on these technologies will encompass physiological study of the respiratory, circulatory, muscular and nervous systems. Students will use microsurgical transplantation and microinjection technologies in developmental biology, directed toward the study of controls of cytodifferentiation and organogenesis in both protostomes and deuterostomes. With the benefit of these new technologies, students will first master the new techniques and then will be encouraged to design conduct, and analyze the results of their own experimental procedures. These modernized laboratory experiences will be incorporated in the new biology curriculum for implementation in the fall of 1994 as follows: one first-year course required of all students, both majors and non-majors; the second semester of introductory biology required of majors; two upper-level courses in biology. The new curriculum has at its core, experimentation and original, creative research, with all second-year biology majors taking a laboratory-based research methods course in preparation for advanced classes.
