Administrators behind the revamping of Molecular and Cellular Biology did not have to wait long to gauge the popularity of their new programs, courses, and requirement changes, said Alexander F. Schier, department chair of MCB.

MCB 60: Cellular Biology and Molecular Medicine, our new gateway course, has enrolled more than 100 students, twice as many as expected, Schier said.

After bringing on more teaching fellows to accommodate high enrollment, Schier, along with his MCB 60 teaching partners Vladimir Denic and Briana Burton, was eager to begin the new class, which implements curricular changes that relate lessons from the classroom to the science seen in news stories.

The changes we made became possible because molecular and cellular biology has become highly relevant for understanding human physiology and disease, said Schier. It is now possible to directly connect most of the biological mechanisms we teach to human disease, ranging from cancer to Ebola.

The teaching team has worked to leverage the increasing relevance of science at the molecular level to stories of outbreaks and popularly reported science. Highlighting these connections will help make the material more accessible to a broad range of students, Schier said.

When you spend all your time in the classroom, youre not paying as much attention to where it will lead you, said Chris D. M. Mukasa 17, a prospective MCB concentrator. Its really helpful to see how people who have graduated with similar degrees make use of their education in productive ways.

The new gateway course is part of MCBs concerted effort to engage concentrators by highlighting the application of MCB to real-world science in addition to fostering a concentration community. Besides MCB 60 and MCB 63: Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, concentration administrators have launched associated programming, like MCBs inaugural movie night.

The administrators organized a showing of the film Contagion for concentrators and pre-concentrators of MCB and Chemical and Physical Biology. Halfway through the movie, a panel of public health experts led a discussion on the epidemiology and biology featured in the movie. The students and the panelincluding Barry R. Bloom, professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and members of Pardis C. Sabetis lab, who have worked on sequencing the Ebola genome this fallarrived at a consensus on the films science.

We MCB concentrators thought they could have done a better job making it seem like an actual pathogen, said Bianca Mulaney 16, an MCB concentrator who attended the event, of the fictional disease in Contagion.

Despite disputes with the technical accuracy of the film, Mulaney said that she thought the movie screening was an effective way to open discussion of MCB topics to a broader undergraduate audience.

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MCB Concentration Updates Receive Good Reviews