Dr. Heise--
just a quick note on how we handle this. We require our bio majors to take
"a plant course", choosing from Plant Biology, Plant Evolution (a
substantial morphology component), and Plant Systematics. Each of these is
offerred every other year. Besides having a separate Genetics course, the
Plant Biology course ( I teach it) has as prerequisites (1) a cell biology
course, which itself has chemistry as a prerequisite; in fact, all of my
students have had organic and virtually every one has either had biochem or
is taking biochem concurrently. As a result, when we get to photosynthesis
and respiration, I do not start at the beginning but say that the
corresponding chapters in Moore et al. are background. I then go onto
discussing those topics from a more plant-specific perspective, e.g.
capturing catabolites rather than ATP; we look at the glyoxylate cycle,
oxidative pentose phosphate pathway, photorespiration, C-4 and CAM
metabolism, thermogenesis, etc. in more depth. (2) The other requirement
is a "survey of taxa" course that introduces the student to various plants
and fungi (etc.). That gives me the "luxury" of concentrating on vascular
plants in our lab, so it has no non-vascular plants, some more anatomy, and
a bunch of physiology experiments, as well as independent projects by the
students.
This program seems to work well. The point, though, is that these plant
courses can only be the way they are because of their curricular context.
All of this will be changing in a few years, because we will be converting
to semesters and have to eliminate 1/3 of our courses. We will end up with
one "plant course" (hybrid of Plant Systematics and Plant Evolution) and
will move various aspects of plant biology into the six required courses
that will form the core sequence (cell bio, genetics, evolution, molecular,
biochemistry, and ecology). Pray for us.
Maybe I need to mention something else, which might be more useful for your
course. My own interests and background are NOT in biochemistry and
physiology, but I get pretty fired up presenting this stuff. For
instance, the glyoxylate cycle is my favorite example of magic-- it truly
is wondrous and delightful-- and I present it exactly that way, including
all the delight and wonder: how a tiny seed uses storage lipids _not_ just
for the energy but to increase mass and elaborate structure, by feeding
carbons into gluconeogenesis etc. It starts back at the very first day of
class, when I tell the students that my goal in the course is for them to
get to be able to "think like a plant". We talk briefly about what makes
plants different than animals, and I have them repeat after me "from the
cell wall, all else follows". These then are themes that come up over and
over throughout the course-- so that when we get to metabolism, they see
that it is not just a way of getting energy into or out of ATP, but of
living as a plant, stuck in one place, managing carbon fixation and water
balance, etc.
I don't know if this idea is coming across in this brief summary. The
point is that (1) the students have a good background, but also (2) we
don't just trudge from one reaction to another. The students only have to
know specifically a few reactions, a few enzymes, a few compounds--- but
they _do_ have to understand _why_ those are there, what they do for the
plant-- the "big picture" as the students say. Consequently, on tests
they can predict when rubisco will be deactivated, what compounds will be
involved, etc. Always I try to put the information into the view of life
as a plant.
Sorry-- I guess "quick" got away from me. There's always stuff in my
course that does the same-- I just haven't figured out how to get to the
parts of plant biology that are most interesting to me, like plant
reproductive strategies, the origin of angiosperms, etc. Maybe next
time? Do I drop transpiration? "Hormones"?
Hope you enjoy the final flurry.
Regards,
Chris Cole
Christopher T. Cole
Associate Professor of Biology
Division of Science and Mathematics
University of Minnesota-Morris
Morris, MN 56267
colect at caa.mrs.umn.edu
(320) 589-6319
