College of Biological Science remake intended to help biologists forge new teaching and research links
BY ANDREW VOWLES
One day last fall, College of Biological Science dean Michael Emes called a lunch meeting with a longtime evolutionary biologist in his college and two colleagues from the College of Physical and Engineering Science. The latter were a newly arrived mathematician, who was still unpacking boxes on the top floor of the MacNaughton Building, and a computing scientist from the Reynolds Building.
Emes says his intent was less to engage in a four-way discussion than to bring together the three unrelated scientists and see what ideas might develop. “I just sat back and watched the sparks fly.”
Those sparks came not from a clashing of ideas but from the possible welding of a new collaboration among three researchers from seemingly disparate fields. Weeks later, those researchers are still talking about ways to use math and computing tools in studying the biologist's DNA-based “bar-coding” system for identifying individual species of organisms. More than that, Emes points to the meeting as an example of a revolution in biological sciences that is reshaping his college and its relations with other disciplines.
Two years' worth of consultations have culminated in a major reorganization of departments and responsibilities in CBS intended to reflect and anticipate changes in biological sciences at Guelph. Among the key changes, the five departments in CBS — Botany, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Microbiology, Human Biology and Nutritional Sciences, and Zoology — have been reorganized into three.
Two of those new departments have resulted from recombining several of those former units in different ways. The new Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) consists of members of the former departments of Microbiology and Molecular Biology and Genetics, biochemists from the former Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (who had moved last year to CBS from CPES) and some botanists.
Also new is the Department of Integrative Biology (IB), which includes botanists and members of the former Department of Zoology.
The third department — Human Biology and Nutritional Sciences (HBNS), chaired by Prof. Terry Graham — actually remains unchanged. That department resulted from a merger 10 years ago of two former departments in CBS and a consolidation of the department's people and resources in the Animal Science and Nutrition Building.
Many of the members of MCB, chaired by microbiology professor Chris Whitfield, have moved into Phase 1 of the new science complex from former offices in the MacNaughton and Chemistry and Microbiology buildings. The remaining members of the new department and all members of the new IB department — chaired by zoology professor Moira Ferguson — will move from the Axelrod Building to the science complex after completion of Phase 2 in 2007. HBNS will remain in Animal Science and Nutrition.
The college has also established graduate and undergraduate program committees. Those groups will be chaired respectively by Prof. Glen Van Der Kraak, the college's associate dean (research), and an associate dean (academic) to be appointed this year. These new bodies are intended to help co-ordinate and integrate teaching and research activities across the college.
The three departments will continue to offer the college's existing degree majors, but will also pursue new courses and programs. Two already in the proposal stage are a graduate program in molecular and cell biology and a bioinformatics graduate program involving that recently arrived mathematician and other researchers across the University.
The restructuring is intended to enable people across CBS to forge new teaching and research connections with each other and with counterparts around campus, says Emes. Referring to advances over the past decade in everything from genetics to evolutionary theory to ecology — and to the recent success of interdisciplinary ventures, including funding applications and the science complex — he says: “The way we do science has changed. We're all biologists now.”
He points, for example, to studies of interactions between genes and the environment being undertaken by college researchers in an applied evolution centre funded last year by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Elsewhere, biocomputation and bioinformatics are drawing together mathematicians, computing scientists, physicists, chemists and biologists to study interactions from the molecular level to whole organisms and populations.
Ferguson, a faculty member since 1986 and a U of G graduate, says the restructuring will help her new department's “critical mass” of researchers tackle complex research problems together.
“It is becoming more difficult for individual researchers to make significant breakthroughs without collaborating beyond the boundaries of their individual labs,” she says.
Prof. Richard Reader, who recently retired as chair of the former Department of Botany, says the philosophy of doing science has changed dramatically. Just look at the heightened interest in studying molecular biology and genetics — an approach that by definition erases many of the traditional boundaries between organisms or whole kingdoms of living things, he says.
“The tools and questions are the same whether it's a plant, animal or microbe.”
Reader notes that botanists and zoologists have regularly interacted through an interdepartmental ecology program for three decades and joint research in plant-animal interactions.
Whitfield says the former departments included researchers studying anything from molecules to populations.
“What this new organization has done is draw together all those individuals, regardless of whether you work on a bacterium, plant or animal. We're drawing together people with a common research philosophy and common avenues of investigation.”
Referring to his own new unit, he says: “A lot of outstanding breakthroughs are not necessarily within the disciplines but at the interface between disciplines, and that's what we're trying to capture with this department.”
Graham says the earlier merger of human biologists and nutritional scientists that spawned his current department anticipated today's interdisciplinary activity. A subsequent review of the department's graduate and undergraduate programs has resulted in an integrated, unique set of programs, he says.
“In the last decade, we have done what the rest of the college is doing now.”
CBS hopes the restructuring will make it easier to promote its programs to prospective students. More and more, those students are looking for integrated program majors in biology rather than the traditional disciplines of, say, botany or zoology. Within the college's undergraduate programs, the single largest enrolment is in the biological sciences major.
“The ability to maintain breadth as well as to study areas in depth is appealing to them,” says Emes.
At the same time, it's the range of degree majors that differentiates Guelph's biology program from those at other universities.
“Guelph still stands out because we offer a wider array of programs than any other university in Ontario.”
CBS is undergoing a curriculum review designed to encourage “active learning” among students, including skills in analysis, problem solving and critical thinking. Whitfield says both that review and the college restructuring will make it easier for students to find their appropriate program.
He also expects to see reduced overlap between units and more efficient resource use, rather than competition for students between majors within the college.
