We propose a program for a Certificate in Biology, intended for students who need augmentation of their knowledge of specific biological subjects but for whom the two biology Master's degrees are inappropriate.
(a) Need for the program:
IIT has had a Masters of Science program in biology for many decades,
and it developed a Professional Masters in Biology about eight years ago.
Both the Master of Science (MS) and the Professional Masters (MAS) programs
are large and successful, with about 100 students enrolled in each currently.
Many of the students in the MAS program are non-local students,
for whom the availability of all the lecture classes in an online format
is an attractive feature.
Currently the requirement for the MAS in Biology is 32-33 semester-hours
of course-work, consisting of core lecture courses,
advanced lecture courses in four specialty areas,
and (optionally) up to three laboratory courses.
The requirements for the MS are 33-34 semester-hours of course-work,
divided up in similar ways, except that some of laboratory courses are
obligatory for the MS.
Students in both the MAS and MS programs must pass a departmental
proficiency examination (the "Profex"), which is administered biennially.
The pass level for MAS students is slightly lower than for the MS students.
However, the minimum admission requirements for the two programs are
the same:
a combined verbal + quantitative GRE score of 1000 plus a 3.0
in analytical writing.
The MAS program includes 8-9 semester-hours of professional course-work,
drawn from courses in communications, business principles,
statistics, and intellectual properties;
these courses are not required for the MS
where instead a thesis or an extended literature project is required.
There are circumstances where the courses developed for this professional masters program are useful to students who do not in fact need to earn a master's degree. In some vocational and educational contexts, there are students who require the knowledge imparted in the biology courses, but without the need for a full-blown master's degree. We recognize a market, then, for a graduate course of study less comprehensive than the full biology program that would nonetheless provide significant insight into problems in life sciences. We believe that a program that draws from the actual graduate-level biology courses in the biology MS and MAS programs and requires the student to take 12 semester hours would provide for those needs and make pedagogical sense. The Certificate would not require passing the Profex or declaring a specific specialty area of study, but the student's program must be approved by a departmental advisor. This advisor will, as is typical of programs like this, provide oversight as to which 12 semester hours the student will enroll in.
A component of the market for this Certificate program is the group of students interested in applying to professional schools in health-related fields whose undergraduate experience does not fully equip them for applying. We have had many students in our MAS program who intend to apply to dental school or veterinary school, but whose undergraduate degree contained insufficient numbers of life science courses. Some of those students may, in fact, not require the Professional courses in the MAS program, and some may have whose science requirements that are less extensive than the 32-34 semester-hours in our Masters programs. For such students a focused 12 semester-hour program might be a more appropriate offering.
This program is consistent with the requirements set forth in the document, "Policies and Procedures for Graduate Certificate Programs."
(b) Relation to other programs:
This program is a proper subset of the Master of Biology program.
A student who completes the Certificate in Biology program and decides
to stay on to earn his or her MAS degree should be able to do so with minimal
difficulty.
A student could instead apply for the MS program, and if he or she
is accepted into the latter, the course-work
taken in the Certificate program would transfer successfully.
In recent years we have also concluded that some of the students who
have been accepted into and have completed many of the courses
for the MS or the MAS in biology cannot actually complete those programs,
either because they cannot pass the Profex or because they do not have
time or money to take all the required courses. This Certificate
would provide such students with a validation of the effort they have
expended and the educational experience they have enjoyed.
(a) Personnel requirements: Since all courses involved are already offered within the existing graduate prograims, no new faculty will be required per se to meet the needs of this certificate program. The department already has administrative support for its MAS and MS programs, and the additional effort required for support of this Certificate program would be minor.
If this certificate program is a success, we may experience increased demand for some specific courses in our graduate offerings. We will respond to that increased demand by offering certain courses more often than we currently do: courses that are now offered once a year might be offered twice a year, and courses now offered in fall and spring might be offered in fall, spring, and summer. We may also begin to offer multiple sections of some courses if necessary. This will require a modest allocation of additional teaching resources, but the added income associated with increased enrollment should enable us to justify engaging additional adjunct faculty to do so. The benefit to our current student population of such an expansion of our offerings will be added convenience and more scheduling flexibility.
Current faculty associated with the program:
(b)Facilities required: All courses in the list above are taught over the Internet, so studios or Internet-equipped classrooms are required. Again, the requirements are already defined to meet the needs of the MS and MAS programs themselves, and the marginal impact of this particular certificate program will be minimal.
(a) Detailed degree requirements: The program requires each enrollee to complete at least twelve semester hours' credit in the biology courses that form the core of IIT's graduate programs, i.e. twelve semester hours chosen among the following courses. A student in the Certificate Program will assemble a Program of Study in consultation with his or her advisor, and the Program of Study will require approval by the advisor, the department chair, and the Graduate Academic Dean. All of these courses are three-semester-hour courses, so at least four courses will be completed from this list.
None of these courses is a short course,
so the program
meets the requirement that no more than half the courses in a
certificate program be short courses.
There will be no comprehensive examination associated with this program.
Students will be required to file an Application for Graduate Certificate Form
prior to beginning their final semester in the certificate program.
Approval of this Request for Certificate Form by the Academic Unit Head
and the Graduate Dean will be required.
Graduation and award of the Certificate in Biology
will require completion of the approved 12 semester-hours of courses
with a grade point average of 3.0 / 4.0 or better.
(b) Admission criteria:
In order to be eligible for this program,
a student must submit an undergraduate transcript showing a grade-point average
of 2.9/4.0 or better and a GRE score of 1000 or better on the
verbal and quantitive sections, plus a 3 or better on the analytical
writing section.
Graduate experience in a related field may be substituted.
The student's undergraduate specialization will ordinarily be
in some area of life science.
Decisions on admission will be made by the Masters in Biology Program Director.
(c) Timeline and schedule:
Because this program is a subset of the existing biology graduate programs,
we can begin to offer the program immediately, i.e. in summer 2010.
A student who begins the program in the fall
would take two courses in that semester and two in the following semester.
A student who begins in the spring could take two in the spring,
one in the summer, and one in the fall,
or two in the spring and two in the fall.