Dr. Ovidiu Lipan (in red) instructs students in the physics lab. Dr. Lester Caudill (center) answers questions in the computer lab, and Dr. Michael Kerckhove (far right) consults with post-baccalaureate fellow Matt Fanelli, ’09.
chemistry and biology, and design team-taught courses, such as scientific calculus, biological imaging, and bioinformatics. In addition to the IQ Science course, the new HHMI grant funds interdisciplinary undergraduate research projects, new interdisciplinary upper-level courses, development of an interdisciplinary sciences minor and an outreach project for middle school math teachers.
A look inside Alex Hahn, ’13, an Oldham scholar and Princeton, N.J., native, plans to double major in leadership studies and molecular biology. In his course application essay, he said he wants to study multiple science disciplines to find a cure for cancer. “Curing cancer is the current ‘impossible’ that I want to convert to fully possible with the aid of proteins, synthetic chemicals in chemistry, the control of protein structure with biophysics, and the natural theories and materials of biology,” he wrote. “IQ Science will reshape my mentality of science as an integration
of various sciences, not simply the possibilities of one specific science.” Expectations are great and so is the workload. Students attend class five days a week plus a workshop on Tuesdays and a three-hour lab on Thursdays. On the first day of class, Hill and Caudill shared teaching duties. Hill introduced the first-semester topic—the problem of antibiotic resistance—and Caudill introduced a mathematical model of how infection spreads in a hospital ward so students could look at the “people” level as well as the DNA level. The class spent the next weeks working mainly on calculus and computer science. Caudill reviewed basic calculus techniques by presenting them in a scientific context, and then Lawson, the computer science professor, taught students the basics of a Java program. The class then used a computerbased simulation model to study disease transmission and antibiotic resistance. They employed classical mechanics—taught in introductory physics—to study antibiotic molecules, particularly intermolecular
forces and motion. Professors wove in elements of chemistry so students could fully understand atom structure and chemical bonding. Later, biology was reintroduced, and—armed with the basics of chemical bonding and molecular behavior—students studied DNA structure and replication, mutation, transcription, and translation. Throughout the class, they searched for novel resistant strains of bacteria in marine sponges.
IQ fusion Developing a fully integrated science course is challenging. The professors must fuse the various disciplines, incorporate different teaching styles, balance student workloads, and quell competition among eager firstyear students. It helps that Richmond fosters a culture of working collaboratively across disciplines. Faculty members spent hundreds of hours last spring at the Gottwald Center for the Sciences working together to create the curriculum. “If you push yourself a little bit and get a grant, then you should be
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