Undergraduate Degree Programs
Welcome from the Undergraduate Coordinator
-Ann Dieffenbacher-Krall, Associate Director of the School of Biology and Ecology
Click here to take a virtual tour of SBE.
Program Learning Outcomes
The School of Biology and Ecology curricula for Biology, Botany, and Zoology majors, both BA and BS, emphasize the broad knowledge base and skills to analyze information across disciplines as is required for modern biology, with knowledge of new approaches and new technology. Each and every student, whether they focus on plants, animals, ecology, human health, insects, or other areas, leaves the University of Maine as a well rounded biologist able to enter a broad array of career fields.
Program learning outcomes are aligned with those recommended by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Foundation with the input of more than 500 biology faculty, and articulated in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (www.visionandchange.org).
- Students will be able to apply the process of science within the discipline and assess societal issues from the context of science.
- Students will be able to effectively communicate ideas and apply concepts across disciplinary boundaries.
- Students will be able to evaluate concepts in science using quantitative reasoning, modeling, and simulations.
- Students will be able to describe and discuss how the diversity of life evolved over time by the processes of mutation, selection, and genetic change.
- Students will be able to describe the basic units of structure that define the function of all living things.
- Students will be able to give examples of how information flow is accomplished through different systems and how the growth and behavior of organisms are activated through the expression of genetic information in context.
- Students will be able to describe and give examples of how biological systems grow and change by processes based upon chemical transformation pathways.
- Students will be able to compare biological pathways and transformations of energy and matter in biological systems.
- Students will be able to explain how living systems are interconnected and how they interact from the molecular level to ecosystems to social systems.
Key concepts are emphasized throughout the curriculum:
- Evolution
- Pathways and transformations of energy and matter
- Information flow, exchange, and storage
- Structure and function
- Systems
Students gain key competencies:
- Ability to apply the process of science
- Ability to use quantitative reasoning
- Ability to use modeling and simulation
- Ability to tap into the interdisciplinary nature of science
- Ability to communicate and collaborate with other disciplines
- Ability to understand the relationship between science and society
