Abstract 1024 Education and professional development: Stories form undergraduate education at King Khalid University

Worldwide, undergraduate students come as a fourth priority of their professors and they face ignorance from the other university staff. The first priority of university professors is the research projects to increase their income and to publish scientific articles so as to increase their university ranking, satisfy the managerial staff needs and to have their employment contracts renewed. The second priority of the university professors is to have postgraduate students to enrich their publication record and to graduate university staff. Community service is the third priority of the university staff because it is required for their promotion. As a trial to give undergraduate students of King Khalid University some care and respect, three education and professional development efforts were carried out. Firstly, oral exam at the end of the biochemistry course was held for the purpose of filling information gaps, correcting misunderstanding, enhancing oral discussion capabilities and improving the continuous assessment of the students. Secondly, research projects were adopted as an activity of the natural products course to introduce the students to the natural products research and to perform practical experiments instead of depending on theoretical lectures. Thirdly, undergraduate research projects were designed to enrich the literature and publish articles in peer reviewed and impact factor journals depending on very simple experiments but of acceptable importance level. Some fruitful results and level of student's satisfaction were obtained.