The B.A. and B.S. degrees in Biochemistry prepare students for diverse careers requiring an understanding of life processes at a molecular level. The B.A. in Biochemistry provides a liberal education and is a highly preferred background for pursuing degrees in human or veterinary medicine, biotechnology, toxicology, clinical chemistry, plant pathology, animal science, law, business, marketing, science journalism, regulatory affairs etc. The B.S. in Biochemistry prepares students for graduate careers in biochemistry, molecular biology, and related fields or to directly enter the job market as research assistants employed by government agencies, drug companies, biotechnology companies, and university research laboratories. These programs involve rigorous preparation in mathematics, chemistry, and biology as well as a foundation in biochemistry. The average ACT score of Biochemistry majors (always greater than 27) is among the highest at K-State. The program is modeled after a general outline for a biochemistry degree prepared by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The number of undergraduate majors varies from 30 to 45, with a 5-year average of 26 juniors and seniors. The B.S. degree requires experience in a research laboratory. This exposure constitutes an invaluable learning experience. The graduating majors (~10/year over the last 5 years) have excellent possibilities for employment or continuing to graduate school. To strengthen the program, the Department intends to establish industrial connections for the sponsorship of internships and to obtain federal support, such as through the Research Experience for Undergraduates program, to increase minority recruitment and aid in attracting well-qualified high school students. Biochemistry majors have received Marshall, Goldwater, and Fulbright Scholarships. About 75% of recent majors attended medical or graduate school after graduation. Most others took positions with life sciences companies.
A graduate student population has been maintained around 35 for over a decade. The 5-year average was 22 doctoral (19-26) and 13 M.S. (11-15) students enrolled. The 5-year average of degrees conferred was 3 PhD and 4 M.S. per year. The PhD and M.S. programs are parallel, not sequential. That is, the majority of candidates for the PhD do not have the M.S. degree upon entry, nor do they seek one. With this in mind, the masters program is viable and should be maintained simply on the basis that there are no additional effort or resources attributed solely to this masters degree program. In addition, for those who do not continue for a PhD, there is a very strong market demand to serve in supporting roles in biotechnology and life science companies. Because leadership positions in industry, university, and government institutions require the Ph.D., the best interests of the university and state are served with emphasis on Ph.D. training.
The Department has fewer faculty than most peer institutions and has less operating support from State sources. The faculty have teaching loads that are comparatively high for Departments of Biochemistry. Costs per credit hour at all levels are consistently below 80% of the costs in Biology, another life science area. At the undergraduate level, a large majority of biochemistry courses are essential services to other majors. At the graduate level, most course content is the same for M.S. and PhD programs. PhD students take ~50% more courses and 5-10x more research hours. The basic 2 semester course (Biochemistry 755 & 756) is taken by advanced undergraduate majors and incoming graduate students. It also serves graduate students from about 10 other departments. It is one of the larger graduate level courses in the College.
Individual summaries of each degree program follow, but it is important to provide a summary of the entire Division of Biology, as the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The Division is a highly integrated unit where the blending of ideas and expertise from the breadth of the biological disciplines has been a major factor in the success of both instructional and research program. An emphasis on one individual biological program and its faculty does not adequately represent the contribution of other biology program sand faculty to the success of any one program. For example: (1) Almost all the faculty, regardless of program specialty, teach at least one introductory biology studio section per year, (2) the biology majors routinely take elective courses in microbiology and fisheries/wildlife biology; while microbiology majors routinely take courses in the biology of higher organisms, etc., (3) over 70 undergraduates per year pursue research projects in the laboratories of the graduate faculty, and (4) numerous research grant proposals include faculty from more than one of the departmental programs. The integration of all these programs within the Division of Biology makes the whole unit strong. A weakness is that a change in just one program or loss of even one faculty member affects the whole Division.
The statistical overview provided on such things as departmental instructional expenditures,
student credit hour production, departmental faculty, actual instructional FTE’s, etc. vary
considerably on a year-to-year basis. However, over a five-year period it appears to us that a trend
can be summarized as unchanged student credit hour production, unchanged or (probably) decreasing FTE’s
and departmental expenditures that are a decreasing percentage of the university’s general use instructional
expenditures and expenditures that overall have not kept up with inflation. Quality science education with its
numerous laboratories and need to keep up with developing technologies is not cheap. Thus far, the Division has
been able to maintain a high quality via the conscientiousness of the faculty and outside educational funding from
sources like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The cost effectiveness, if compared to institutions with similar
high faculty and student quality, would show us to be incredibly cost effective.
With the Division of Biology as the largest academic unit in the College of Arts and Sciences, its mission affects all areas of campus. The Division and more specifically, the General Biology emphasis provides an instructional and research breadth of knowledge from cellular to ecosystem level. The Division provides the fundamental biological education of all undergraduate students and other pre-requisite graduate level courses for several outside disciplines. Finally, the Division offers a number of service courses to a majority of students who are not in a biological, physical, or agricultural science options.
The Bachelor’s program recruits students with an average ACT composite score of nearly 2f7 or 88th percentile nationally. Of these, over half were granted university-level scholarships. In addition, about 57% of the students receiving a BS continue their education in professional health schools or graduate schools.
With a policy of offering full financial support to all graduate students who are admitted, results in a smaller number of students enrolled but a more competitive and challenged class of students. Over the next seven years, the Division plans to increase the size of the program slightly, expecting to shift more to the PhD degree.
Of the half of the biology majors that do not continue their education, 90% find positions that utilize their science education in such fields as laboratory technicians, sales and marketing representatives for food and pharmaceutical companies, health care areas not requiring an advanced degree but needing the science and analytical skills.
Students obtaining a MS degree have several opportunities for employment depending upon their specific
research training. Many have accepted positions in the biomedical or biotech industries, resource managers
for government agencies, consulting opportunities, science-related jobs in sales, marketing, and research
management, and even in the education sector at a community college or large high schools. The PhD graduates
have been faced with a competitive market for teaching/research positions at universities/colleges. K-State
graduates have faired well and many of the recent graduates have found positions at large universities. In addition,
many have accepted post-doctoral fellowships. With the interdisciplinary training provided at K-State, PhD graduates
from K-State are in high demand.
The Fisheries and Wildlife (F/WL) major has on average 133 majors (82 Jrs. and Srs.) and an average of 27 annual graduates over the past five years. It is the only complete fisheries and wildlife program in the state of Kansas. The F/WL degree program is a popular one for two groups of students, those who wish to preserve the habitat of and preserve or increase the numbers of “game species” (pheasant, turkey, prairie chicken, bass, catfish, etc.) and those who wish to do the same for all species and in general to save the ecosystem. The Konza Prairie Biological Station, the federal F/WL Cooperative Unit, the active student chapters of The Wildlife Society and American Fisheries Society augment the educational, research and job finding success in the F/WL degree program.
Although the average ACT composite scores of F/WL majors are not as high as general biology or microbiology majors they are a solid ~24 average over a 5-year period, a notch above the overall K-State average. Although the number of F/WL bachelor’s graduates accepted for post-bachelor’s education programs is not as high as for general biology and microbiology majors the percentage accepted into graduate programs (almost 25%) is significant.
The job market for F/WL majors has been, is, and probably always will be tighter than that for graduates of the
other two majors. Further, the starting salaries are low compared to those of other biology and other science majors.
The reasons for these two negative aspects are that the jobs are almost all governmental jobs, i.e., few areas
in the private sector are looking for F/WL expertise. That said, it is highly praiseworthy of the program to point out
that two-thirds of the F/WL graduates do find employment in the field. And these students will put up with initial low
pay just to work with animals and the environment. The most recent statistical data (K-State Career and Employment
Services post graduation statistics, Arts & Sciences, 8/01-5/02) show that 28% of graduates were in graduate
school, 11% were either seeking employment or were listed as misc., and 61% were employed (average salary
of $21,000).
The microbiology undergraduate major has averaged 77 majors (59 Jrs. and Srs.) and 22 annual graduates over the past five years. This is a laboratory intensive degree program which is provided because of: 1) the large number of faculty with active research labs in recombinant DNA technology, molecular/cellular biology, virology, etc. These research labs provide students with experience in the latest techniques via part-time jobs and undergraduate research projects and 2) modern, well equipped teaching laboratories (via funding of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) in virology and molecular genetics, which provide formal training in key technology.
The undergraduate students in microbiology have a similar ACT average as the biology undergraduate students. In addition, many (over half), will continue their education in either a graduate program or professional school. Microbiology majors also do very well in national scholarship competition with six majors having won the Goldwater scholarship since 1992.
As it is with the General Biology graduate programs, the Division’s faculty made a decision to fully fund the graduate students. This in turn limited the number of students admitted to each of the graduate programs. On the other hand, the competition for these funded positions as GTAs, GRAs, or GAs, has increased the quality of the graduate students enrolled. Unfortunately, this decision may have had an inverse affect on the number of graduate students applying and enrolling at K-State in microbiology in comparison to the general biology discipline. In recent years, the number of majors and degrees conferred has decreased in concert with faculty retirements and the temporal gaps in hiring and establishing the research programs of replacement faculty. Over the next few years, the Division plans to achieve the five-year average of 5 majors and 2 degrees conferred. Even though these are achievable, the Division will monitor the progress and if it becomes clear that these goals cannot be attained, then the Division will move to eliminate the microbiology graduate degree program.
There has always been and will be for the foreseeable future a strong demand for students with microbiology bachelor degrees. In addition to this degree providing an excellent route into professional health degrees microbiologists are in demand in the food processing and pharmaceutical industries (both in research and quality control positions), in demand for lab tech positions in the burgeoning recombinant DNA fields, and in demand as laboratory technicians in hospitals, medical technology companies, and government and university research labs. The most recent post graduation statistical information (period 8/01-5/02, K-State Career and Employment Services) indicates starting salaries as high as $40,000. Employment demand for holders of advanced degrees in Microbiology remains high, and could even improve if significant efforts to combat bio-terrorism are made by the government and private sector.
Quality of students is indicated in both their academic preparedness on entry into the program and in their success in obtaining employment and entry into professional and graduate schools. The number of Kinesiology students receiving prestigious University scholarships as well as the total amount of funds associated with these awards has progressively increased over the past 5 years. Also, 142 returning students achieved a grade point average above 3.0. The department awarded an additional $17,000 to 42 of these returning students for academic excellence. All of these parameters of student academic excellence represent substantial increases over years past. These are strong indicators that the program is continuing to attract students that are academically better prepared. In addition, the Department offers a dual degree in Nutrition and Exercise Sciences in conjunction with the Department of Human Nutrition in the College of Human Ecology. This unique dual degree provides the student with critical background in both kinesiology and nutrition science from which application to health and disease can be made.
Currently, there are over 400 undergraduate students enrolled in Kinesiology degree programs (316 in Kinesiology and 88 in the dual major Nutrition and Exercise Science), representing a growth of 225% over the last 10 years (9% in the last 5 years). Of these, 165 are juniors or seniors in Kinesiology, while the dual degree has 35 upper division students. Kinesiology students are successful in competing for jobs as well as graduate and professional school positions. Eighty per cent of graduates (2000-2001) were either employed or enrolled in graduate or professional school 6 months after graduation. Also, 80 percent of those employed had jobs related to the field and 87.5 percent held jobs with long term potential.
Regarding the Master’s program, the number of students fluctuates annually between 25 and 33 students. This variation represents year-to-year fluctuations in graduation, as well as fluctuations in available graduate teaching assistant (GTA) and research assistant (RA) positions within the Department. New students average 12-15/year, with the number of applicants averaging 25-35.
Cost Effectiveness
Several positive trends point to an appropriate cost for delivering undergraduate and graduate education in the Department of Kinesiology. Total student credit hour (SCH) production (lower, upper division and graduate individually, also) has grown 12% since 1998. This reflects increases in SCH by both majors and nonmajors. Further, SCH per Tenure/Tenure Track Faculty (163.3 to 570.2, increase of 250%), and SCH per FTE (164.4 to 241.8, an increase of 47%) show strong positive trends. These positive trends have adequately balanced the increase in Departmental Instructional Expenditures (due primarily to hiring of five new faculty since the last review), such that the Cost per Credit Hour at the lower division, upper division and graduate levels have remained stable. Since the department has filled all of the current lines available from the College, the costs for delivering instruction should rise nominally in the near future. However, the current trends for increased total SCH predict that the cost per credit hour will likely decline over the next few years. The costs for delivering the Kinesiology programs are comparable to the costs for similar size programs within the University, and at comparable institutions.