The Department of Biological Sciences has made a conscientious effort to improve its undergraduate and graduate programs during the 1996-97 academic year. This report summarizes those efforts. It describes the goals, the processes we have used to assess accomplishment of the goals, analysis of data and identification of strengths and weaknesses, evidence for or against accomplishment of the goals, improvements and enhancements we have made, and recommendations of future changes in academic programs and assessment processes.

Undergraduate. The department’s goals for its undergraduate majors are three-fold. Firstly, we aim for our students to gain a broad base of general knowledge, focused particularly in the biological sciences, and capped with in-depth knowledge specific to their particular major program. We expect our students --regardless of major program -- to be biologists, with a breadth of knowledge across the sub-disciplines to enable our graduates to communicate and appreciate biological sub-disciplines other than their specific major. Our second goal is that our students have broad knowledge in humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and natural sciences, coupled with analytical, oral and compositional skills, to promote good citizenship and the capacity for life-long learning. Finally, our goal is to prepare our students with sufficient depth of knowledge in their specific major programs to assure successful employment in the field, successful entry and completion of graduate and professional schools for advanced study, and to have a high level of satisfaction with the preparation they received in their major.

Graduate. The department’s goals for its graduate students are for them to have a depth of knowledge in their area of specialization sufficient to enable them to be successfully employed in their field and to function as a mature and independent scientists. Toward this end, our goal is to assure that our graduate students have sophisticated skills in designing and conducting scientific experiments, excellent analytical skills appropriate to the specialization area, and excellent authoring experience in the scientific literature. Our goals include preparing graduates sufficiently that they are employed in doctoral and research universities as tenure-track faculty and professional scientists or industrial research scientists and that they have a high level of satisfaction with their graduate program.

Goal Development. These goals have been developed over the past decade by several groups of faculty representing the department’s curricular and research focus groups. These groups have been charged by the current and previous department chairs with addressing curricular issues and outcome success issues that our internal assessments have brought to our attention. There is broad, but not total, agreement among department faculty about each of the above goals. The greatest degree of tension resides in the portions of the goals that deal with curricular breadth both within and without biological sciences per se; however, a strong majority of the faculty of this department supports the stated goals.

Recent Changes in Departmental Goals. We have made substantial changes in the manner in which our goals are stated, not in the specific aims we seek to achieve. After the 1996 assessment report, we realized that our stated goals were described in too great detail and specificity for the purposes of this assessment report, and several of our goals were naively and simplistically enunciated such that attainment would require decades of effort. We believe the present statement of goals is superior in that it encompasses both the general and specific goals we share, but it permits a yearly measurement of progress toward the long term objectives.

Testing Instruments, Methods, and Processes Used to Collect Assessment Data. A variety of assessment methods, including both quantitative and qualitative processes, are being used to determine whether our goals are being met.

At the undergraduate level, quantitative methods include performance on the Medical College Aptitude Test (MCAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). Both of these tests are administered nationally, and both provide invaluable information about the preparedness of our students at the beginning of their senior year. Additionally, both are valuable because many students from all of our major areas of study take both examinations each year, thereby giving us an across-the-board objective assessment of what our students know at that stage of their studies. However, for practical reasons, we can rely only on the MCAT at present because we get a complete report of the scores our students earn on this test, but we have been unable to obtain such complete reporting concerning the GRE. Additionally, we have strong objective data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) on matriculation of our students into allopathic medical schools each year. This is a further measure, across-the-board, of the preparedness of our students mid-way through their senior year.

Qualitative methods employed in assessing success in meeting our goals for our undergraduate students include reports (Career and Further Education Study and the Long-term Educational Outcomes Study) from Ohio University Institutional Research, direct feedback from graduates, and the quality of the professional and graduate schools into which our students are admitted.

At the graduate level, we rely on statistical data which include the number of peer-reviewed papers published, the number of papers given at meetings, the mean time to complete the degree, and success in finding employment or further education as objective measures of success in meeting our goals for our graduate students. Qualitative measures include teaching evaluations and awards received by our students, and periodic questionnaires for our graduates to complete.

We have not altered our methods since last year.

The department receives MCAT scores for each Ohio University student who takes the test, as well as means for students across the university and the nation. Each year we can follow the success of our own students against the university and national averages. The data also allow us to delineate among general categories of subjects, including verbal ability, physical sciences, writing, and biological sciences. Our goal is for our students to outperform the national average in each category. Additionally, because we have records on this test for many years, we can determine whether changes are occurring and in which direction for each category, as well as the overall score. We would consider a downward drift of scores by our students, especially in comparison with the national means, to be a major area of concern, and conversely, a consistent upward movement of our students’ scores would be evidence that we are making progress toward our goals.

In similar fashion, we receive a complete listing of applicants from Ohio University who have applied to a college of allopathic medicine. We also are informed as to which school, if any, an applicant has been admitted. We are supplied with data on the national applicant pool with summaries of the numbers of applicants and the successes they have nation-wide. These data allow us to determine the success rate of our students in comparison to national trends. We have these data for many years, and we can observe changes in the successes of our students in comparison to the national trends, and in correlation with MCAT scores and GPAs. As in the case with MCAT scores, a downward change in our students’ acceptance rates versus the national mean would be cause for concern, while an upward shift would be evidence for progress.

Results from Ohio University Institutional Research, likewise, are available over a period of many years. We can compare the results for more recent graduates with those from previous classes, and we can compare the results for our graduates with those across the College of Arts and Sciences and the entire university. We focus on several summary statistics from these reports. In particular, we track the employment rate of our graduates, the length of time to become employed, average salaries, satisfaction with major courses, how well they were prepared for their career goals, and how well they were prepared for additional academic work. We also use the long-term educational outcomes results to assess graduates’ satisfaction with their academic preparation five years after graduation. We analyze these data for evidence that graduates are not satisfied with any aspect of their experiences at Ohio University, and we note any changing patterns occurring over a span of several years. Dissatisfaction rates greater than 10% concern us, as do downward shifts in satisfaction rates. Conversely, satisfaction rates of greater than 90% are indications that we are making progress toward our goals.

For our graduate programs, we note whether students completing degrees publish their thesis or dissertation results in peer-reviewed papers within one year of completing their degrees. We expect all of our Ph.D. graduates to have met ths goal and 67% of our M.S. graduates to have met the goal. We expect that each graduate student will have presented a minimum of one presentation on their research at a scientific meeting before he or she is graduated. Our goal is for all graduate students to be employed within three months of graduation or to be enrolled in further educational pursuits. All of our graduate students must teach during their program of study, and each course is evaluated by the students taught. Our goal is to have our graduate TA’s earn high scores from the students they teach, and if a student earns below average scores, they are counseled to help them improve their scores. In our periodic questionnaires, we seek information on the satisfaction students have with their program, the degree to which they perceive it prepared them for them career aspirations, and suggestions for changes that should be made in the graduate program. Satisfaction rates under 90% are considered significant reasons for concern.

Undergraduate

1. MCAT scores. MCAT scores are centered at approximately 8.0 in each category nationally. At present, our students’ MCAT scores are at the national average, except for the writing score, which is consistently below the national average. This pattern has been in existence for the past four years. However, in 1991, our students scored significantly below the national average in all categories. The data are summarized in the table below. Before 1991, the MCAT had six subcategores, and direct comparisons are not possible, but proportionately, our students were performing much more poorly than the national average prior to 1991. These data reveal that our students have improved their performance, but we still have much to do to attain our goal of having our students perform significantly higher than the national average. Furthermore, the consistently poorer performance of our students in writing samples on the MCAT concerns us, and we realize that we must take steps to correct this deficit.

2. Medical school admissions data. In the period from 1990 through 1996, 69.0% of our premedicine students were admitted to medical schools. In that same time interval, the national average of medical school admissions, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, was 44.6% of all applicants to allopathic medical schools. (Unfortunately, we do not have access to the data for all osteopathic medical schools.) When we compare admissions only to allopathic medical schools, we find that in 1990, 58.8% of all applicants were admitted nationally, while for our own applicants to allopathic medical schools, only 34.5% were admitted. Yet, in 1996, 48.4% of our applicants to allopathic medical schools were admitted, while across the nation, the acceptance rate was 38%. The data indicate that the number of applicants sharply increased during these years, so the competition became much more intense. The fact that our students’ acceptance rates have risen sharply in comparison to the national mean is evidence of our having made progress, but there is still much to be done to assure that all our qualified students gain admission.

3. Ohio University Career and Further Education Study data. Only 7% of our indergraduates were unable to find employment within the first year after graduation. Most of those seeking employment were able to get a job within three months of graduation. These patterns have remained constant in the interval from 1990 through 1995, the most recent year for which we have data. While we would prefer for all of our graduates to have employment immediately upon graduation, we feel that the employment rates are quite good considering the job availability during this time period. In addition, the employment rates are similar to the College of Arts and Sciences, except that a higher proportion of our graduates are in graduate or professional schools, and are not currently seeking employment. Sixty-eight percent of our graduates were satisfied with major courses at Ohio University; however, 32% were "not at all satisfied". Clearly, this is cause for concern. We hope to identify the reasons for such a high rate of dissatisfaction with our courses. We recognize that one possible reason that a graduate might be dissatisfied is that if a he or she failed to gain admission to a professional school and, instead, began employment in an unrelated field, many of the majors’ courses may not seem pertinent. In such an event, it may not be possible to gain satisfaction from these graduates because their career plans changedat the conclusion of their undergraduate program. On the other hand, 97% of our graduates felt that Ohio University prepared them for their career goals, and 98% felt that they were well prepared for additional academic work. These data are similar to those for the College of Arts and Sciences and for the university as a whole. Our graduates averaged salaries of $24,488 in 1995. This is somewhat above the mean for Arts and Sciences, but somewhat below the mean for all university graduates.

 

4. Ohio University Long-term Educational Outcomes data. In most of the categories examined in this study, our graduates in 1986 and 1987, 1988 and 1989, and 1990 and 1991 were very well satisfied with their education and experiences at Ohio University. This pattern was generally the case for areas relating to their major area of study. There were several types of competencies graduates felt they needed and which they felt Ohio University might have prepared them better. One of these was in the area of coping with complex moral and ethical issues. Seventy-seven percent felt this is important, but only 76% stated that Ohio University had been helpful in this area. Ninety-four percent stated that sensitivity to the feelings and perceptions of others is needed, while 75% thought that Ohio University was helpful in this regard. Sixty-nine percent felt that the ability to use computers is important, but 62% said that Ohio University was helpful. While 57% felt that participating in community service is needed, 71% felt that Ohio University was helpful for this need. In all these areas, we note that our program has room to improve. Most of these perceived needs are not easily met entirely within major courses, but there are avenues both within courses and within university experiences that can be employed to help address these issues. It is interesting to note also that the perceived need for computer literacy progressively diminished among our graduates from 1986 to 1991, while the perception that Ohio University was helpful increased slightly over that time. We plan to follow this trend over the next several cycles because we have done much to increase computer use among our students since 1991. Another statistic from this study caught our attention. While graduates feel that they were "very satisfied to extremely satisfied" with their interactions with faculty, the percent who were not at all satisfied increased form 8% in 1986 and 1987 to 12% in 1990 and 1991. While this may reflect only the large increase in the numbers of students we have as majors, it is something we must watch carefully.

 

5. Qualitative information. Reports we have received from our graduates in medical, physical therapy, veterinary schools and graduate schools indicate that very few, if any, of our students have difficulty completing their programs of study, once admitted. Furthermore, students continue to be admitted to well-respected schools. Examples of such institutions to which our students were admitted in 1996-97 are Washington University, Duke University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Brown University, and Yale University.

 

6. Graduate student statistics for 1996-97

M.S. Students:

• Five students completed the masters degree program.
• Average length of time to complete the program was 2.9 years.
• Presentations: Each of these five students presented at least once at a conference (total of 7 presentations).
• Publications: Three of the five students were an author of an accepted manuscript (total 5 manuscripts).
• Current activities: one is in the doctoral program at Brown University two are enrolled in medical school, and two are employed by the government or industry.

• Ten students completed the doctoral degree program.
• Average length of time to complete the program was 5.8 years.
• Presentations: Each of these students presented at least once at a conference (the range was 1-6 presentations per student, and the total was 28 presentations).
• Publications: Five of the ten students is an author of an accepted manuscript (total 9 manuscripts) at this point.
• Current activities: Eight have post-doctoral fellowships (including Stanford University, NIDCH, University of Pennsylvania), one is an instructor and physical therapy student at University of Alabama , and one is a scientist in the Edison Institute

Changes in the Undergraduate Program. To assure that our students will gain a broad base of general knowledge, focused particularly in the biological sciences, and capped with in-depth knowledge specific to their particular major program, each student is required to take courses in each of the following sub-disciplines for the B.S. degree: Genetics, Physiology,  Organismal form (anatomy), Ecology or Evolution, Cellular or Biochemistry, and General  Botany or Microbiology. To assure that all our majors have a strong physiology course, we have designed a new sequence of physiology, at the junior level, which will facilitate the application of in-depth knowledge specific to certain of our major areas. This course is a rigorous preparation for upper division courses in the preprofessional and biological sciences curricula. In addition, to provide more diversity and breadth, the following courses have just been approved to be offered by our department: BIOS 416/516 Biogeography (co-listed with Geography); BIOS 462/562 Animal Physiological Ecology; MICR 514 Virology; MICR 475/575 Microbial Ecology; MICR/BIOS 427/527 Mechanisms of Gene Regulation; BIOS 320 Fundamentals of Animal Cell Biology; BIOS/PBIO 217 Women in Science. Furthermore, a new major has been established in Neurobiology. These new offerings are intended to provide more depth in the various majors of our department, while at the same time providing more breadth in biological sciences.

It was our assessment in 1994 that we needed to offer more research opportunities for our undergraduates in order to give our students real experiences in biological research. It was our conviction that by offering undergraduates more opportunities to work shoulder to shoulder with faculty on a laboratory or field biology project, students would gain not only specific knowledge about the topic under investigation, but they would gain experience in experimental design and critical thinking. Therefore, with support from alumni, a scholarship was established to support an undergraduate student in full time research during the summer. This opportunity has rapidly expanded, and during the 1996-97 year, we had two students funded with alumni support, and our Neurobiology program was awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation Human Frontier of Science Program for summer research in neurobiology for 10 undergraduates each year. Also, during the year, we established an endowment to perpetually support undergraduate research opportunities in this department. Beyond this, the department is supporting summer research opportunities in molecular and cellular biology through a new program established by the Interdisciplinary Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology. These are beginnings of what we hope will rapidly expand to enable many additional students these experiences.

Changes in the Graduate Program. Merger of Doctoral Program in the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology with the Department of Biological Sciences, as mandated by the Ohio Board of Regents, was accomplished during the year. This involved extensive discussions between the two departments that resulted in a) creation of a policy document describing the joint doctoral program, b) creation of a document describing joint appointment status for graduate faculty in the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology, c) revisions to graduate course listings to reflect the merger, and d) implementation of the merger with the admittance of the first doctoral students into the merged program.

Greater financial support for travel for graduate students to conferences is being provided in response to our external doctoral review committee report in 1995. The department funded 22 graduate students to deliver presentations as a first author and 4 graduate students to present as a second author. Two students presented at International Conferences held outside the United States.

To give students a better start, improvement of fall orientation for new graduate students was initiated. Improvements included the following: a) New graduate students attended a more extensive teaching orientation seminar series for several afternoons prior to the start of fall quarter. These seminars were organized by the Ohio University Center for Teaching Excellence. b) Students attended two orientation sessions delivered by a faculty member representative from the graduate committee and the graduate student representative on the graduate committee. c) A reception attended by the faculty, staff, and current graduate students was held to welcome the new students. d) Throughout fall quarter a series of meetings was held in which each research focus group in the department provided an orientation session at which individual faculty members explained the techniques and research questions they were utilizing in their labs.

It was our assessment that we needed to improve the quality of our graduate student teaching evaluations. To this end, the graduate committee established a more reliable accounting system to ensure that each graduate student was evaluated by undergraduate students and the faculty mentor for each course that a graduate student served as a teaching assistant.

Although it gave us high marks for the admissions process we use for graduate student admissions, the 1995 doctoral program review committee suggested that we document more completely the rigor of our admissions standards. The results of this year’s graduate admissions process are as follow:

• 191 partial applications were received by the department.
• 115 complete applications were received.
• 21 students were admitted (21/115 x 100 = 18%).
• 12 of 21 students offered acceptance will attend Ohio University (57%).
• All 12 new students will be funded as teaching or research assistants.
• Quality of accepted students continues to be high:
• Admitted doctoral students:
• Undergraduate GPA: 3.4.
• Graduate GPA: 3.79.
• GRE scores: verbal: 72%, quantitative: 63%, analytical: 67%.
• TOEFL (n=1): 640.
• Admitted master students :
• Undergraduate GPA: 3.2.
• GRE scores: verbal :71%, quantitative: 61%, analytical: 58%.
• TOEFL (n= 1): 643.

Academic Programs and Curriculum. We are working toward establishment of a molecular, cellular, and developmental biology concentration at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels. This is arising out of our assessment that we are not offering our undergraduates enough cellular and molecular biology, and from the recommendations of the external doctoral review committee that we enhance our graduate concentration in developmental biology by introducing more molecular biology in that area. Likewise the team suggested that we add molecular biology in our muscle biology-exercise physiology area, and we hope to be able to do that in the near future.

The data we have from our students’ performances on the MCAT indicates that we need to emphasize writing more in our curriculum. We currently include writing (term papers, essays, and reports) in most of our upper level classes, but we need to do more. We will continue to stress, among the faculty, the need for more writing and support efforts to enhance writing across the curriculum at Ohio University.

We will need to identify the reasons why approximately one-third of our recent graduates are not satisfied with our major courses. We will attempt to gain the answers by questionnaires to be mailed to recent graduates. Once identified, we will try to eliminate the causes of dissatisfaction if possible.

We must continue to monitor the MCAT scores of our students and seek ways to help them score higher on the test, either through changes in courses or changes in scheduling courses or examinations near the time students must take the MCAT.

Changes in Assessment Processes. It is imperative that we get better data on the GRE scores of our students. We have not been able to find a way to gather these data, yet they are potentially very important to our assessment process.