Spring Break
Biology and math merge in new curriculum
By: Liang Liang
Issue date: 9/29/04 Section: News
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The National Science Foundation granted the College of Science $1.25 million to develop an interdisciplinary undergraduate program at Texas A&M that will incorporate biology with mathematics and statistics.
The 1,144 undergraduate students in the Department of Biology are required to only take basic mathematical classes. Students on the biology track in the integrated program will be required to have 23 credits in mathematics, six credits in statistics and 104 credits in biology, chemistry and genetics. Students on the mathematics track will need 61 credits in mathematics, six credits in statistics and 60 credits in biology and the biology-related sciences.
Dean of the College of Science Dr. H. Joseph Newton said the Interdisciplinary Training for Undergraduates in Biological & Mathematical Sciences (UBM) program is a four-year experiment and A&M is one of five places chosen to conduct the experiment.
"Biology is becoming more and more mathematical, (although) it historically had been the least mathematical," Newton said. "For example, the students in biology were not required to take calculus. Now it has changed. Research projects like the Gene Project indicate a trend for biology majors to know about math."
The program is designed to recruit 10 students to concentrate on biology with a minor in mathematics and 10 students to concentrate on mathematics with a minor in biology, but has recruited only 12 students this fall.
Adam Stevenson, a senior computer engineering major, has been studying in the program since last December, even before it officially started.
"I came to the program because it integrates computer science with math and biology. My goal is to be able to use mathematics to learn and understand concepts that cannot be understood without mathematics because of their abstract nature," Stevenson said. "Mathematics allows us to reduce complex biological problems into simple equations and to gain further insight into those problems that were not originally noticeable."
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