Both the BA and BS degrees in Biology are designed to meet the needs of students expressing an interest in general biology and preparing them to be competitive as applicants to a variety of graduate programs, professional schools or immediately in the job market.

Student Learning Outcomes

Biology majors at Washburn University, upon completion of the program will be able to:

• Describe and explain fundamental biological concepts in cell biology, genetics, organismal biology, structure and function relationships, ecology, and evolution.
• Explain and utilize the scientific method.
• Employ and demonstrate a variety of scientific techniques in the core biology disciplines of zoology, microbiology, genetics, and undergraduate research.
• Analyze and interpret scientific data.
• Evaluate scientific information and use oral and written presentation skills to formulate explanations of data in a professional manner.

Degree Requirements

Biology, BA 

The Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Biology requires a minimum of 38 hours in Biology: the 20-hour BI core and 18 additional BI hours; 15 of these 18 hours must be upper division BI courses. The degree requires a minimum of 120 credits to graduate.

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Core
BI 102	General Cellular Biology	5
BI 103	General Organismal Biology	5
BI 301	General Microbiology	4
BI 333	General Genetics	4
BI 390	Biology Seminar (Capstone Course)	1
BI 395	Research in Biology (Capstone Course)	1
Subtotal		20
Non-Biology Courses
MA 140	Statistics	3-5
or MA 151	Calculus & Analytic Geometry I
Select one of the following physics sequences:		10
PS 261 & PS 262	College Physics I and College Physics II
PS 281 & PS 282	General Physics I and General Physics II
CH 151 & CH 152	Fundamentals of Chemistry I and Fundamentals of Chemistry II	10
CH 340 & CH 342	Organic Chemistry I and Organic Chemistry Lab I	5
Subtotal		28-30
Additional Courses 1
Select additional BI courses		18
Subtotal		18
Total Hours		66-68

¹

15 of these 18 hours must be upper division BI courses

Biology, BS 

The Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Biology requires a minimum of 44 hours in Biology: the 20-hour BI core and 24 additional BI hours; 21 of these 24 hours must be upper division BI courses. The BS degree also requires a 30-hour Concentration to be chosen from the Natural Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics & Statistics, Physics & Astronomy, or Computer Information Science). The degree requires a minimum of 120 credits to graduate.

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Core
BI 102	General Cellular Biology	5
BI 103	General Organismal Biology	5
BI 301	General Microbiology	4
BI 333	General Genetics	4
BI 390	Biology Seminar (Capstone Course)	1
BI 395	Research in Biology (Capstone Course)	1
Subtotal		20
Non-Biology Courses
MA 140	Statistics	3-5
or MA 151	Calculus & Analytic Geometry I
Select one of the following physics sequences:		10
PS 261 & PS 262	College Physics I and College Physics II
PS 281 & PS 282	General Physics I and General Physics II
CH 151 & CH 152	Fundamentals of Chemistry I and Fundamentals of Chemistry II	10
CH 340 & CH 342	Organic Chemistry I and Organic Chemistry Lab I	5
Subtotal		28-30
Additional Courses
Additional BI courses 1		24
Additional Natural Science Concentration Courses 2, 3		5
Subtotal		29
Total Hours		77-79

¹

21 of these 24 hours must be upper division BI courses

²

This Natural Sciences Concentration must be in departments other than the major, and must have at least 20 hours in one department. This is satisfied by completing the non-Biology required correlate courses plus 5 additional credits of Chemistry coursework.

³

Natural Sciences Concentrations for the BS degree are limited to these courses: CH 151 Fundamentals of Chemistry I or above, PS 261 College Physics I or above, MA 116 College Algebra or above, CM 111 Introduction to Structured Programming  or above.