Buff Brains can now major in neuroscience

For many years, faculty members in the University of Colorado’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and other departments have been asking questions about how the brain works.  Now, undergraduates at the University of Colorado will have the opportunity to participate more in this quest.

For the first time this fall, CU students declared a major in neuroscience that will be housed in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. Next spring, about 40 students are expected to graduate from the program.

Scientists who study how the brain works are called neuroscientists—a term that emerged 50 years ago to recognize that the study of the nervous system and its relationship to the mind and behavior encompasses many fields of science, including molecular biology, biophysics, genetics and psychology.

Adding a major in neuroscience might seem a natural development for a department whose name includes the term “neuroscience,” but in a time of tight budgets, supplementing the curriculum was no small feat.

This new major was created by drawing heavily upon existing courses, the expertise of the faculty and an unexpected form of assistance: social media.

In the spring, the department launched an online survey to gauge students’ eagerness to declare neuroscience as their chosen major. “We realized there was an explosion of interest out there,” says Don Cooper, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience and co-director of the neuroscience undergraduate program.

About 300 students said they wanted to enroll in a neuroscience major. But some had basic questions, such as: “What is neuroscience?” and “How does it differ from psychology?”

Those are good queries. As Cooper notes, the line delineating psychology and neuroscience is “an evolving question.”

The faculty knew students had a longstanding interest in neuroscience, notes Jerry Rudy, college professor of distinction of psychology and neuroscience. In fact, the university has offered an undergraduate certificate in neuroscience for a number of years. But the extent of the interest in a full-blown major was surprising.

The first course in neuroscience enrolled 46 students. Many of them wondered which courses would count toward a yet-to-be implemented neuroscience major.

Academic advisers didn’t know how to answer those questions, Cooper says. Some psychology majors needed more coursework in areas such as biology, chemistry and math. At the same time, students majoring in molecular biology and integrative physiology tended to be better prepared for the course of study required in neuroscience.

Students began emailing Cooper with questions, so he set up a Facebook page to congeal the collective wisdom of participants. He called the Facebook page “CU Neuroscience,” and it opened the door to “real-time discussions” within a large and disparate group.

Cooper envisioned social networking as a way for people to get answers to common questions without having to go through the advising process. When those questions were answered, “I could refine it and refer back to it.”

Within a month, the page’s fan base ballooned to 178.

Rudy, a former chair of the department, notes that the social-media strategy reduces or eliminates some of the work load on academic advisers. “Many questions students have are generic and can be answered without face-to-face contact. Some are even better answered by their peers,” he observes.

“We were faced with this problem of budget cuts, and yet we wanted to expand. We had to go with the model that it would be revenue-neutral,” Cooper says.

The nucleus of the program is a two-course sequence, Intro to Neuroscience 1 and 2. There are 2,300 psychology majors and 46 slots in the Intro to Neuroscience course, approximately the number of expected graduates next spring.

This milestone has been awhile in coming, but the seeds were sown in 1996 when the department underwent a regular program review. As Rudy notes, the result was a strategic plan that recognized that neuroscience was a significant component of the mission of the National Institutes of Health, which funds much of the department’s research.

So the department’s strategic hiring plan was designed to hire more faculty whose research included a strong neuroscience component. Neuroscience was already part of the department’s focus, but, as Rudy recalls, “We needed to embrace it.”

Of the 40 faculty members now in the department, about half are studying the nexus of behavior and the brain.

“Until quite recently we didn’t have enough faculty to support a department-based neuroscience undergraduate major,” Rudy notes. Recent faculty hires gave the department the human capital to launch the major in neuroscience.

One of those new faculty members was Ryan Bachtell, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience. Another was Cooper, who aims in his teaching to employ what neuroscientific research has revealed about attention and learning at the neuronal level.  Cooper intends to design a “neuropedagogical” approach to promote learning in and out of the classroom.

In addition, the department, in conjunction with the Institute for Cognitive Science, also hired new faculty member Tor Wager, who has a strong neuroscience component to his research.

As Rudy notes of the undergraduate neuroscience program, Cooper “pushed it and pushed it and made it work.” Both Cooper and Rudy add that they’ve enjoyed enthusiastic support from the department’s current chair, Lewis O. Harvey, and the dean, Todd Gleeson.

Prior to launching the major in neuroscience, other members of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience played a critical role in developing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in neuroscience that enrolls students from many cognate disciplines.

This very successful graduate degree was created under the leadership and commitment of Professors Linda R. Watkins and Steven F. Maier, who are both University Distinguished Professors. The degree is administered through the Center for Neuroscience that Maier and Watkins created and co-direct.

Rudy notes that an increasing number of universities now offer an undergraduate major in neuroscience. At CU, as elsewhere, it can serve as a pre-medical-school track. And its popularity is evident.

Clementine Snow, a neuroscience major, describes her field of study as a brand-new branch of science to be discovered by minds craving knowledge. “So far, I’m loving all of the new things I’m learning in my intro class and love the fact that those teaching it are genuinely interested,” she says. “The fact that parts of the course are online, even on Facebook, makes it very accessible and provides an ease of use to those of us already used to the system.”

Fellow neuroscience major Kyle Sorensen concurs, adding that neuroscience is popular because it allows students to explore the horizons of knowledge “about the universe and within our cranium.”

Such interest is evident in society as well. “If you read magazines and newspapers and look at what science is most talked about, most of it has to do with the brain,” Rudy says.

Further, he notes, the Society for Neuroscience has about 40,000 members.

CU’s neuroscience program just received a Google AdWords grant for $10,000 per month indefinitely in advertising.  Cooper says the department hopes the exposure will boost enrollment into CU and into the neuroscience major, boost Continuing Education enrollment for distance learning and assist fund-raising efforts for course development, faculty teaching awards and student scholarship.

“Our main challenge is containing the interest” at CU, Cooper says. “We could have 400 majors.”

“I assume we will,” Rudy adds.

For more information on the undergraduate major in neuroscience, seehttp://psych.colorado.edu/~nrsc/, check out “CU Neuroscience” on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Boulder-CO/CU-Neuroscience/103780552990751?ref=ts, or follow the program on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CU_Neuroscience. Students majoring in neuroscience, who nicknamed themselves “Buff Brains,” also have a Facebook page under the same moniker: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001225734777&ref=ts.