Zoology
- Mission Statement
Mission
The Department of Zoology provides accessible, engaging, and relevant educational opportunities, resources, and expertise in all facets of animal biology and associated life sciences.
Values- Encourage freedom of exploration in the life sciences.
- Serve diverse students at varied levels of engagement in animal biology including general education courses, support courses for non-zoology degrees across campus, and a diversity of courses relevant for careers in the sciences.
- Involve students in active research and community service.
- Through research and service, contribute new knowledge within fields of zoology and related life sciences.
- Through engaging coursework and independent instruction, confer skills in problem solving, critical thinking, communication, and disciplinary methods, which facilitate productive futures for Zoology students and, especially, Zoology graduates.
- Strengthen life-science education and practice across Weber State University and throughout associated communities along the northern Wasatch Front metropolitan areas of Weber, Davis, and surrounding counties.
- Student Learning Outcomes
- Certificate (Not Applicable)
- Associate Degree (Not Applicable)
- Bachelor of Science
Students completing the Bachelor of Science in Zoology will be able to demonstrate knowledge in the following outcomes:
Core Concepts:
- Evolution: The diversity of life is the result of mutation, adaptation, and selection pressure over time.
- Cellular Organization: All living things consist of one or more cells, the units of structure, function, and reproduction.
- Genetics: All living things share basic genetic mechanisms, which are responsible for the organization and continuity of life.
- Ecosystems: All organisms are interconnected, interacting with each other as well as with their dynamic environment.
- Structure and Function: There is a relationship between molecular and organismal structure and function.
- System Regulation: Biological systems are governed by chemical transformations and homeostasis.
Core Competencies:
- The Process of Science: Students will use observational strategies to test hypotheses and critically evaluate experimental evidence.
- Quantitative Reasoning: Students will represent diverse experimental data sets graphically and apply statistical methods to them.
- Communication: Students will explain scientific concepts to different audiences and work collaboratively to explore biological problems.
- Science and Society: Students will develop biological applications to evaluate and address societal problems.
- Certificate (Not Applicable)
- Curriculum Grid
- Program and Contact Information
The Department of Zoology serves diverse roles at WSU. Courses in the department include those that meet the life-science general-education requirement, those that are service courses for students pursuing careers in medicine, and courses for science majors, with emphasis on zoology majors. All courses are designed and delivered in a manner consistent with the Zoology mission statement and measurable learning outcomes. Thus, courses are diverse and emphasize both important zoological content and practical skills relevant to biological fields. Coursework serves as the formal venue for zoological study, but many students also engage in independent study. These students typically work with faculty members in research projects. Many such projects produce professional-quality results and give students substantial education and experience. Faculty members are well qualified and students overall indicate teaching in the department is better or much better than average. Advising in the department is organized by potential career path, so very specialized and relevant career advice is available to the large majority of zoology majors and pre-professional students. Faculty members are active in research and community service, which enriches their teaching and, especially, independent work with students.
Contact Information
Dr. Ron MeyersWeber State University2505 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408
Tracy Hall, Rm 412
(801) 626-6170 - Assessment Plan
We plan to move to a program-based assessment, specifically by incorporating a number of BioMaps exams, which are offered through Cornell University. Presently (since Spring 2023), we are using the standardized BioMaps General Biology Exam given at the beginning of our major (in Zool 2220) and also at the end when students are getting their Grad Sign-off; this will give us early-in-the major and final-semester assessment point for comparison. This current report is the first to contain this data.
The Zoology Department recently met with Dr. Brandon Burnett, Chair of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, who shared information on the revision of his department’s assessment plan. The Zoology Department was impressed and is interested in a modification of our assessment strategy modelled on that of Chemistry’s. Moving forward, the department will meet to determine if (1) standardized exams can be used in our core classes to displace the exam question alignment that is very time-consuming and not very data-strong. (2) We presently use two BIO-CORE General Biology exams to assess knowledge at the beginning of the program and again at the end when students take the exam in their final semester. We feel that this data is valuable and can show areas where students need more background information. We will also be able to compare our students to national scores on this exam. (3) We plan to re-evaluate our assessment grid to focus on how to identify two points in the curriculum to assess student mastery of each outcome. Faculty have had some issues aligning Learning Outcomes to their exam questions using Canvas. This has impacted the assessment data for this report. Moving forward, these issues should hopefully be fixed.
Program-Level Assessment
In response to our 2022-23 program review, the Zoology Department decided to investigate the use of a standardized test in our program level assessment. Faculty in the department evaluated the limited number of standardized testing options available. The Educational Testing Service Major Field Test in Biology is widely used for program level assessment; however, after reviewing the content of the exam, we found it contained a section on Botany, which is not a required course for our majors. This led us to the Bio-MAPS (Biology Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science) diagnostic assessments administered by the Cornell University Physics Education Research Lab (https://cperl.lassp.cornell.edu/bio-maps). The Bio-MAPS assessments align with the Vision and Change report nationally accepted suite of core biological concepts that students should master by graduation (according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science). There are four assessments available, each focusing on a different core area of biology: Ecology and Evolution, Molecular Biology Capstone, Physiology, and General Biology. Faculty with expertise in the aforementioned areas reviewed the content of each exam to determine whether it would be suitable in assessing the breadth of knowledge we expect our students to attain by graduation. After careful consideration and discussion, we decided to pilot the use of the General Biology assessment.
Per the recommendations from Couch et al. (2019), we decided to use the General Biology Bio-MAPS exam at two time points during our students’ degree program: the end of our introductory series of courses and just prior to graduation. The exam is administered by Cornell; faculty register their course and are provided with a link students use to complete the exam. Faculty are sent the score breakdown after the testing period closes. We decided that the first exam would be given in the second of our two-course introductory series, Diversity of Animals (ZOOL 2220), and then again as a required component of their “graduation sign off” the semester in which they apply to graduate (hereafter referred to as graduates). Since majors do not take classes as a cohort or in a common sequence, aligning the exam to the grad sign-off is our best way to assess student performance in their final semester. We then compared the average scores between the two groups of students. Students enrolled in Zool 2220 were offered course credit for completing the exam (the results do not provide individual scores for students, therefore students are given credit for completing the exam only). Students applying to graduate were asked to show proof of completion to the Department Chair but participation was essentially voluntary. Thus far we have had remarkable compliance in graduates taking the exam, with about 96% of students taking the exam. Moving forward, the department is evaluating the logistics of developing a one or zero credit class to correspond with the “exit” exam if the numbers of these students decreases.
We piloted this for the first time in the Spring of 2023. All graduates (n=28) and 48/50 students enrolled in Zool 2220 completed the exam (Table 1). The graduates averaged 71%, which was 10% higher than the average score for students in Zool 2220. Not only did our students show improvement over the course of their degree, but they aligned with national median scores on this exam. Couch et al. (2019) analyzed data from 5000 students at 20 institutions in the US and found that the average improvement from students in the introductory series to the “end of advanced courses” was 11.7%. The overall median score of students at the beginning of an introductory series (61%) and end of the advanced courses (75%) matches the scores of our own students in Spring 2023. The results of the exam also provide scores in the three core areas: Ecology and Evolution, Physiology, and Cell and Molecular (see 2024 report for scores).
Our students showed growth in all three areas, in particular in the area of Cell and Molecular—increasing by 12%. The questions in the Cell and Molecular section have been identified as most challenging to students taking this exam in general (Couch et al. 2019). Further, students in ZOOL 2220 were unlikely to have taken courses in Cell Biology previously. Zoology students scored similar to reported median scores in Physiology and above median scores in the Ecology and Evolution section at both times points (Couch et al. 2019).
Based on our experience in Spring 2023, we used the exam again in the Fall of 2024. All 40 students enrolled in Zool 2220 completed the exam in addition to 18 graduates (Table 1). In Fall 2024, students in Zool 2220 scored well-above the national median scores overall as well as in each core area. The average overall scores of our graduates were once again 10% higher than students in Zool 2220; scores in each core area improved by 7-11%. Overall scores once again aligned with the national medians. Our student’s scores in Ecology and Evolution were higher than the national medians at both the introductory and graduate (advanced) levels in Fall 2024. The average scores for graduates in Fall 2024 were similar to the national medians in Physiology and Cell and Molecular.
It is worth noting that the Bio-MAPS exam and the results it produces has limitations. First and foremost, it is not possible to provide incentive for students to perform well on the exam, beyond simply requesting students put forth their best effort. All students were provided background information on the exam and were given an explanation of how the data would be used (per Couch et al. 2019) to help encourage them to perform to the best of their ability. Giving credit for completing the exam was recognized as an effective way to incentivize completing the exam (Couch et al. 2019); however, it does not inherently incentivize performance. As there is no way to track the performance of individual students either in a given exam or between exam periods, we were not able to incentivize achievement of a high score nor assess individual student learning over time. Finally, there is no study guide or preparation provided to students prior to taking the Bio-MAPS exam, as there is for other standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, or GRE. Despite these limitations, we feel we have successfully employed this exam to assess student comprehension both during the introductory series of our degree and just prior to graduation. Not only did our students improve between the two time periods, but they also are performing at or above the national average. Overall, after two semesters using this exam we feel it may provide meaningful program-level assessment.
The Zoology Department is also investigating having our students take three subject-specific Bio-CORE exams (in Physiology, Cell & Molecular Biology, and Ecology & Evolution) in three of our required classes (Zool 3600, 3200, & 3450) in order to assess them in these three areas. This semester we are conducting a trial run to assess if the exam content is appropriate to use in assessment. Moving forward, as we revise the curriculum grid, these exam scores will be used to assess student performance in these areas. The department will also be meeting to evaluate other approaches to assess class knowledge where these standardized exams are not available. One possibility to investigate is to use some questions on Genetics from the MCAT exam that Medical schools use as an entrance exam. These questions are geared towards knowledge based on College-level Genetics classes.
Work Cited:
Couch BA, Wright CD, Freeman S, Knight JK, Semsar K, Smith MK, Summers MM, Zheng Y, Crowe AJ, Brownell SE. 2019. GenBio-MAPS:
A programmatic assessment to measure student understanding of Vision and Change core concepts across general biology programs.
CBE Life Sciences Education 18:ar1, 1-14. - Assessment Report Submissions
- Program Review
This information is part of the cyclical program review process. Details such as mission statements, learning outcomes, etc., are updated as part of the biennial assessment reporting process, an integral component of program review.