Major Affairs: Mathematics and CS in Biology

Try to imagine cell biology without a quantitative knowledge of cell potential — the mechanism that describes how water and ions pass in and out of our cells. Envision population genetics without the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium model — the basic mathematical model that allows scientists to estimate the relative frequencies of phenotypes within a population. Today, understanding biology without mathematics is almost inconceivable. From neural networks to biometry, mathematics and computer science have invaded the science traditionally known for its lack of analytics. Despite these profound changes, the biological sciences major currently requires that students complete only one year of college level math. This includes one semester of calculus and a second semester of math, which could be another calculus class, statistics or linear algebra.

For many students in the biological sciences major, this requirement is sufficient, although some feel that the type of required math classes should change. “I think biological statistics, or statistics should be mandatory, but not classes like calc 2 or linear algebra,” Ameet Patheja ’11 said. Patheja is a pre-med biology major.

This sentiment, that classes such as calculus and finite math are too abstract for many biologists, resonates among students and professors within the biological sciences. Prof. Cole Gilbert, entomology, teaches BIOG 1101: Introductory Biology. Gilbert serves on the Biological Sciences Curriculum Committee, a group responsible for reviewing the addition of new courses to the biology major. The committee created a sub-committee to “work with professors in [other] disciplines, especially chemistry, physics and math to put more biology examples in their classes, because their classes were mostly biology students,” Gilbert said. These students “might find the material more interesting if the examples were relevant to biology rather than just being relevant to the discipline they were taught in.”

[3]In BIOG 1101, Gilbert incorporates quantitative reasoning into his assignments, but he finds that his students will more often bring numerical problems to office hours. Gilbert says this shows that they are not as comfortable dealing with quantitative problems. “Instead of making up stories to make it seem like it’s relevant to biology, actually teaching freshman math from the viewpoint of data analysis” is a change Prof. Stephen Ellner, ecology and evolutionary biology, suggested as one solution to the theoretical math courses that are currently part of the biology major requirement.

Simply adding a new, applied math course to the biological sciences major is not an option. At 78 credits, this major almost reaches the limit of 80 credits allowed by the College of Arts and Sciences for any major.

“It’s an extremely low-flexibility major,” Ellner said. “The question that a curriculum committee or a task force would ask is, does every biology major at Cornell need to take this course, or should we structure the major so that the ones who want to take it will be able to?”

Dave Lotterer ’09, a biology major with a general biology concentration, volunteers as student adviser for the Office of Undergraduate Biology. When asked about the mathematical component of the biology major, Lotterer said “I haven’t found that I’ve needed it. I think what’s nice about being a bio major here is that you can choose your own pathway. You can do general biology, or you can do computational biology, if you want a more math focused discipline.”

The computational biology concentration, one of 13 different programs of study, is the major source of applied math and computer science courses within the biological science major. The department created this concentration five years ago. Computational biology requires computer science, upper-level mathematics, and mathematical modeling courses that apply to genomics, ecology and neuroscience. These courses are only required for the computational biology concentration, but many maintain that literacy in computer programs such as MATLAB and a higher quantitative knowledge are important for all biology majors.

“[Students] should have basic computer literacy in terms of MATLAB programming for example which is almost universal. They should also know parts of math — a large part of the work done in my lab is dynamical systems analysis, geometrical approaches to studying complex systems,” Prof. Ron Harris-Warrick, neurobiology and behavior, explained. “A lot of that calculus [is required for the major], that’s stuff that I don’t use in my lab at all”.

However, there is resistance to making a greater number and variety of math courses mandatory for all biological sciences majors. “Cornell is basically an anarchy. The notion for a lot of things is give people as much freedom as possible. So it goes against the grain to say this is the math class that all biology students must take. Instead we’ve put together a list and said, these are the classes you should want to take,” Ellner stated.

Movements to restructure the teaching of Biology at Cornell began in February 2007, through the Undergraduate Biology Curriculum Task Force, which was established by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Susan Henry and Arts and Sciences Dean Peter Lepage, and chaired by Harris-Warrick. The objective of this task force was to revise the teaching of introductory biology and the biology major in order to “enhance the quality of introductory courses,” according to the task force’s report.

The idea of restructuring the biology curriculum is not a completely original one. Like Cornell, many universities including UCLA and UC Davis have also made efforts to change their biology curriculums to adapt to the current state of biological research. “BIO 2010,” a report published by the National Research Council in 2003, advocates for changes in biological education at the undergraduate level in order to prepare students for the changing nature of biological research, particularly in the area of biomedical research. The report acknowledges that biologists are becoming more and more dependent on technology, theoretical models and quantitative analysis, and asserts that “Life sciences majors must acquire a much stronger foundation in the physical sciences (chemistry and physics) and mathematics than they now get,” so that they learn to use ideas from other scientific disciplines in their thinking and experimentation.

“We had in mind that we were also going to look at the teaching of chemistry, physics and math,” Harris-Warrick said. “We spent a few weeks getting started on that and then we realized that it would take another year or two years.” The task force proposed a complete change in the core requirements of the biology major, replacing one year of introductory biology with several in-depth freshman-level classes in topics such as ecology, cell and developmental biology and physiology. In making these changes, the task force also needed to spend time considering the impact these changes would have on students’ applications to medical school and graduate school. One concern of the task force was how medical schools would react to a transcript without introductory biology on it, since a large portion of students in the biology major are also pre-med. However, according to Ellner, applicants from universities that had already disposed of the introductory biology classes for a sequence of in-depth core courses were not less likely to get into medical school.

With all these changes to the biology part of the biological sciences major, Harris-Warrick said that the revision of the quantitative literacy part would probably be put off until 2010. “I think a lot more could be done. [Right now] everybody is thinking about the total overhaul of biology,” Ellner said, “not just about the math.”