COS 81-4 - Building Connections with Pre-Medical Students in Undergraduate Ecology Courses

Abstract: Background/Question/Methods

Undergraduate biology programs often require students to take a course in ecology or environmental science. These programs are often designed to be broad in their requirements to serve a student population with interests spanning the human health fields to those wanting to go into environmental based field work positions. While the direct connection between human health impacts and topics discussed in general environmental science courses helps to encourage pre-health student engagement, the same is often not true for undergraduate ecology courses. Direct connections and correlations between ecological concepts and studies are less obvious when the course is taught without connections being made within the course by faculty familiar with a variety of human biology themes such as immunology, pathology, microbiome research, and general human physiology. Perception of ecology courses as irrelevant to their field of study can be a challenge for teaching ecology to human health focused students. However, students with intentions of attending medical school are now required to have some level of ecological theory knowledge as the MCAT now includes ecology content related questions. It is necessary for faculty teaching general ecology courses to a wide variety of biology students to familiarize themselves with the human health topics above in order to help students identify connections between the external ecosystems and their own human ecosystem.



Results/Conclusions
I will present student evaluations and faculty reflections collected across five years of incorporating human health related content and materials into the Principles of Ecology course (BIOL 4513) at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. Overall knowledge of ecological theory and mastery of content improved overtime as evidenced by increased exam and assignment grades. Both pre-health and environmental field bound students reported greater satisfaction in taking the course than previous years. Additionally, pre-med students reported greater confidence in their performance on ecologically based MCAT questions. Ultimately, all students in class recieved the benefit of being able apply ecological theory to non-typical scenarios and improve overall understanding of the content.