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"What do you think a biochemist does?" "What lab skills do you have, and how are you using them?" "What can you do with a biochemistry degree?" These are all questions asked of students early and late in the term in a new sophomore-level biochemistry course at the University of Texas at Austin. This novel course in the recently reformed degree plan introduces students to what it means to be a biochemist. With a focus on skill building, students learn basic biochemistry laboratory techniques and molecular modeling. These emphasize key biochemical principles such as structure/function relationships and quantitative analysis that are built upon in future courses. In addition, guest speakers from academia, industry, and career services show students a variety of biochemistry career paths as well as provide timely and relevant career advice. Together, this course's curriculum equips students with skills and knowledge to make informed decisions early in their college journey to prepare for an impactful and personally meaningful career. Importantly, this is the first of several courses where we will evaluate program-level learning outcomes established for the biochemistry degree. We present an overview of the course and our approach to tracking student outcomes through project-based and/or metacognitive assignments. Finally, we report on the results of our first course evaluation survey-a mixed methods study designed to evaluate student perceptions about the course structure, their impressions of biochemistry careers, attitudinal growth, and skill gains. We present these results alongside recommendations for skills-based course development and curriculum redesign efforts. The development of this biochemistry course was in part supported by the University of Texas System Curricular Innovation Grant.
Garrett et al. (Fri,) studied this question.