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Nature of course request C00910 :

Description change

Prerequisite change

400/500 course

From:
Course Prefix & Number	Descriptive Title	Credits/Hours
BI 454/554 W	Plant Ecology	4 - 0
To:
Course Prefix & Number	Descriptive Title	Credits/Hours
BI 454/554 W	Plant Ecology	4 - 0

Abbreviation for Class Schedule(20 spaces) Plant Ecology

Current Course Description: Fundamental of plant ecology, population dynamics, seed sand pollination ecology, mutualism, competition, predation, colonization and extinction, breeding systems, ecological genetics and physiological ecology. Lab teaches techniques to study plants and illustrate lecture materials. Prerequisite: botany, an ecology course or consent of instructor ¿ offered spring term of even-numbered years.

New Course Description: Focuses on the patterns of distribution and abundance of organisms in space and through time. Explores the underlying causes, both natural and anthropogenic, of these patterns at the population, community and ecosystem levels for a variety of plants and ecosystems. In the lab, students will engage in nearly all phases of ecological research. Emphasis will be placed on learning to effectively communicate ecological concepts in writing to a non-scientific audience. Three lectures and one three-hour laboratory. Prerequisites: BI 211, BI212, BI213, WR 135 and MTH 111. Offered spring term of even-numbered years.

Justification for changing the course (e.g. alignment with other institutions, program revision, etc.): Facing serious annual enrollment challenges, the Biology Department reassessed its third year core (which includes General Microbiology and General Ecology or Plant Ecology) with an emphasis on ensuring students are more adequately prepared for the rigors of these advanced courses. This is particularly important for understanding ecology, which requires strong experience in animal and plant diversity and function (emphasized in Biology 212 and 213), and math ¿ especially algebra and basic statistics applications. Given that we just submitted a course change proposal to develop a new BI 211 trailer course with more flexible prerequisites for BI213, we now need to explicitly state that all students entering Plant Ecology need to have taken the whole 200-level sequence (Biology 211-2-3). Math 111 is a new prerequisite and reflects the level of mathematics expected and used in this course. Although the catalog generally states that writing-intensive courses require WR135 and this course is always writing-intensive, we wanted this more explicitly stated in the course description. The new course description is reflective of changes made to the course in the past several years ¿ in particular: the instructor has taken on teaching this course from a faculty member who has left WOU and this revised course description better reflects the breath of BI 454W/BI554W as it is currently being taught. Additionally the new description better reflects the alignment of core ecological principals between this class and BI 357 (General Ecology). This course description change involves no new FTE or space requests.

Students/Program affected: Biology Majors ¿ all emphases (some emphases can choose between General or Plant Ecology) Biology Teacher Education degree NOTE: the Biology minor does NOT require ecology, but students can select it as an option.

Approval Queue C00910

Attached Files: