This project is designed to address a systemic lack of laboratory experiments in molecular biology in majors' and non-majors' courses at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Experiments centered around DNA analysis will enhance student understanding of major biological concepts and scientific reasoning, and majors will develop strong skills in many of the common techniques of DNA analysis. Teams of students will carry out experiments in forensics, phylogenetics, population genetics, cell biology and animal behavior at the freshman through senior level. This equipment will also support student-faculty research in a project that will use microsatellites to assess genetic relatedness. Experiments for non-major's courses draw on student fascination with DNA evidence in the courtroom and directly relate scientific processes to human concerns. Techniques to be introduced include agarose and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, use of restriction enzymes and analysis of restriction fragment length polymorphisms, DNA isolation and quantitation, the polymerase chain reaction, reverse transcription-PCR, Southern transfers, use of chemiluminescent probes, computer-based image analysis, bacterial transformation and colony screening. The proposed project is of interest because of its focus on DNA-related techniques across a broad spectrum of questions to be investigated, the way in which technical skills are reinforced throughout the majors' curriculum, and the emphasis on non-majors' as well as majors' courses. Biology majors constitute almost 9% of the student body at WVWC, and over 200 students per year enroll in the affected on-majors' courses, including all elementary education majors, for whom one of the courses fulfills a state requirement. At this small, liberal arts institution with a tradition of successfully preparing students for medical and graduate school, curricular changes are often difficult to justify. Our evaluation of the proposed project should be of interest to similar colleges faci ng the same challenges.
