THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT ASHEVILLE

FACULTY SENATE

Senate Document Number 8311S

Date of Senate Approval 04/28/11

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Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document 67:    Replace CHEM 435 with CHEM 437 in requirements for B.A. Concentration in Biochemistry

Effective Date: Fall 2011

1. Delete: On page 92, under Bachelor of Arts Degree-Concentration in Biochemistry:

19 hours as follows: CHEM 406, 407, 408, 435, and 3 additional hours of 300-400 level course work in CHEM; BIOL 116 and 7 hours of 300-400 level course work in BIOL approved by the Chair of Chemistry.

Add : On page 92, in place of deleted entry:

20 hours as follows: CHEM 406, 407, 408, 437, and 3 additional hours of 300-400 level course work in CHEM (CHEM 390, 411 or 499 cannot be used to fulfill this requirement); BIOL 116 and 7 hours of 300-400 level course work in BIOL approved by the Chair of Chemistry.

Impact: 

There will be little impact on the staffing and resources of the Chemistry Department. CHEM 435, Bio-analytical Instrumentation Laboratory, is a course that has regularly had a low enrollment (5 students in Spring 2011, 6 in Spring 2010, 1 in Spring 2009) and has been taught as an overload by the faculty member. It is anticipated that students will take the lecture course, CHEM 437, Biochemistry II, in the semester in which they would normally have taken CHEM 435, thus increasing the enrollment in CHEM 437.

Rationale: 

CHEM 435 is a 2 credit-hour course which is expensive to run and difficult to schedule, and is not considered a core course in preparing students for study in professional schools. Students will be better served by having a second lecture course in Biochemistry (CHEM 437) which builds on the foundations in Biochemistry I (CHEM 436, required of all majors). This change will ensure that Biochemistry II is a sustainable course, being required by two of our concentrations in Chemistry.

We are also including the list of courses that cannot be used to satisfy the upper-level elective course. 390 and 499 are variable credit-hour research courses (three research courses are already required: 416, 417, 418), and 411 is Laboratory Assistantship in Chemistry. Students must take courses other than these to complete the requirement. These courses have been excluded from the list of possible electives for quite some time, and this has been communicated during advising. Adding the exclusions to the catalog formalizes the process.