From climate change and biofuels to the H1N1 vaccine, biology is at the forefront of today's news. And now, with a change in degree requirements, students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) will leave Cornell with a better understanding of these issues.

Since fall 2008, CALS students in such non-life science majors as applied economics and management and communication can partially meet their life sciences distribution requirements without taking a two-semester introductory biology survey course.

"Students felt that the introductory biology courses were not presented as much in the context of real-world situations as what they wanted for it to stick in their minds and be meaningful to them," said Don Viands, associate dean and director of academic programs in CALS. He noted that nearly one-third of CALS students are in non-life science majors.

In 2006, Dean Susan Henry asked Viands to chair a task force that identified the criteria needed to be met in the life sciences distribution requirements for the non-life sciences majors. "We wanted to present life sciences in a real-world context, we wanted to get the students into smaller classes, and we wanted to be sure there were plenty of active learning opportunities in these new courses," Viands said.

About 10 courses now meet the new requirements. "There have been a few courses created because of this, and a few courses have been modified to be used for this group of students," Viands said.

One such new course is Microbes, the Earth and Everything. "We are trying to teach how living systems … impact people's day-to-day lives," said Dan Buckley, associate professor of crop and soil sciences, who co-teaches the course.

For example, a recent class field trip to the Ithaca Wastewater Treatment Facility exemplified what the students had learned about metabolism and the processes that occur naturally in the carbon and nitrogen cycles.

"The plant … basically mimics the natural processes -- it just speeds them up," Buckley said. "That is also what you might see with a wetland that takes contaminated waters and cleans them out before they get to a lake or stream."

The students also perform open-ended experiments and engage in debates on current biology topics. "The ultimate goal for me is that somebody leaving our course can pick up the science section of The New York Times and … understand it, or say, 'I doubt this because of my knowledge,'" said Esther Angert, associate professor of microbiology, who co-teaches the course with Buckley.

Says Damian Miraglia '12, an information science major who opted out of the introductory biology survey course and is taking the microbes course: "I decided to take an alternate biology course to fulfill my life sciences requirement because remembering any kind of useful information from a broad survey course in a field so far removed from my major would be impossible." He added, "I still get a lot of basic biology, but in a much finer context, and I'm more apt to learn and retain information."

Graduate student Sarah Perdue is a science writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.