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. 2016 Summer;15(2):es1.
doi: 10.1187/cbe.15-11-0234.

Beyond the Cell: Using Multiscalar Topics to Bring Interdisciplinarity into Undergraduate Cellular Biology Courses

Carolyn F Weber  1
Affiliations

Beyond the Cell: Using Multiscalar Topics to Bring Interdisciplinarity into Undergraduate Cellular Biology Courses

Carolyn F Weber. CBE Life Sci Educ. 2016 Summer.

Abstract

Western science has grown increasingly reductionistic and, in parallel, the undergraduate life sciences curriculum has become disciplinarily fragmented. While reductionistic approaches have led to landmark discoveries, many of the most exciting scientific advances in the late 20th century have occurred at disciplinary interfaces; work at these interfaces is necessary to manage the world's looming problems, particularly those that are rooted in cellular-level processes but have ecosystem- and even global-scale ramifications (e.g., nonsustainable agriculture, emerging infectious diseases). Managing such problems requires comprehending whole scenarios and their emergent properties as sums of their multiple facets and complex interrelationships, which usually integrate several disciplines across multiple scales (e.g., time, organization, space). This essay discusses bringing interdisciplinarity into undergraduate cellular biology courses through the use of multiscalar topics. Discussing how cellular-level processes impact large-scale phenomena makes them relevant to everyday life and unites diverse disciplines (e.g., sociology, cell biology, physics) as facets of a single system or problem, emphasizing their connections to core concepts in biology. I provide specific examples of multiscalar topics and discuss preliminary evidence that using such topics may increase students' understanding of the cell's position within an ecosystem and how cellular biology interfaces with other disciplines.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Questions that provide a framework for mapping a multiscalar topic, such as the bioprecipitation cycle, to the five core concepts for biological literacy (AAAS, 2011) and content specific to undergraduate cellular biology courses. Core concepts targeted by the questions are shown in parentheses. Core concepts are fully detailed in Table 1.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The topics of eutrophication and cancer share common links (indicated by lines) to the five core concepts for biological literacy (Table 1; AAAS, 2011), which illustrate their common biological foundations, even though these two topics are rarely, if ever, discussed in the same undergraduate course. Arrows link chains of events leading up to or resulting from cancer and eutrophication.
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