IMPACT OF CONVERGING DISCIPLINES IN CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY MINOR IN INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY

摘要

Tremendous advances are being made in pharmaceutical and biotechnology discoveries and their applications (including manufacturing), as well as in health care services. As a result, there is an increasing sophistication of the products and services available and being developed, with an ever-widening scale of applications and marketing. The growth of biotechnology results in ever-expanding needs for college graduates who have knowledge of life-science based products and processes. There have been numerous reports of current and projected shortages of human resources possessing the required knowledge in the growing industry. In order to address the gap between education and the workforce, the Department of Industrial Technology has developed an academic minor in biotechnology being implemented in fall 2004. This interdisciplinary biotechnology initiative is the result of a partnership among the Department of Industrial Technology, the Department of Biology, and the Department of Pharmacy. The program is administered within the Department of Industrial Technology. The minor is taken while the student continues his/her academic field of study and is made up of the following courses: Fundamentals of Biology, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cell Biology, Biotechnology Laboratory courses, Regulatory Compliance, Process Quality Control, and Bioinformatics. The minor is available to any Purdue University student majoring in any four-year degree baccalaureate degree program, i.e., science, technology, engineering, agriculture, pharmacy. The purpose of the minor is to offer the graduates of these four-year programs the basic knowledge and understanding of life-science based products, processes, and product quality to seek employment opportunities in the area of biotechnology and biotech-manufacturing.