Curriculum and Semester Schedule

The Trudeau Biomedical Scholars semester consists of five 3-credit courses providing the student with 15 transferable, 300 and 400 level credits. Each semester offers 2 University courses, 4 varied Knowledge Areas including two Technology courses and 2 Communication Points. Owing to the location of the instruction and study in a working research institute, the semester also qualifies as a professional experience.

Courses

This course will introduce students to the basic principles of immunology and pharmacology with an emphasis on current treatment strategies employed to combat infectious disease. Students will learn how vaccines are used to prevent infection, in addition to the deployment of small molecule drugs and newer antibody-based therapies for the treatment of existing infectious disease. Course information will be disseminated to students in the form of lectures, readings from review and original research articles, and through group discussion that involves case studies and problem-based learning.

Knowledge areas: STS

This course will provide students with an introduction to the theory and methods of DNA, RNA and protein sequence analysis in the context of disease biology. Integrated computer laboratory exercises will give students significant experience retrieving, manipulating and analyzing information from sequence and genome databases.

Knowledge areas: CSO, CS
Communication point: C1

This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, with the aim of providing students with an understanding of how history may inform twenty-first century health challenges.

Knowledge areas: TECH

In this course students will learn fundamental basis for histology, and advanced techniques for characterizing cells at the individual and population level of observation including biomolecular methods.

Knowledge areas: STS, CGI

From a distance, the study of medical history might appear a little more than an idle pursuit – perhaps only a study of great men and their discoveries. However, even slight reflection on the social, institutional and cultural features of medicine will lead us to reconsider much about medicine that we might before have taken for granted.

The goal of this course is to learn detailed information related to the structure, packaging and expression of genes within the genome of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms in relation to disease.

Knowledge area:  Individual and Group Behavior

Decision making is using information (and in some cases emotion) to guide behavior among multiple possible courses of action.  These choices determine our success in meeting the challenges of life.  This course will cover a wide variety of topics regarding how individuals and groups form judgments and make decisions.  Particular focus will be given to judgment and decision-making in applied health contexts that are of high relevance for students with career goals in the biomedical sciences.

Knowledge areas: STS, CGI
Communication point: C1

This problem-based course will task students to analyze and suggest solutions to a complex problem in the field of infectious disease research. The course is intended to reinforce techniques and concepts students have acquired in the other courses during the Trudeau Scholars in Biomedical Sciences Program. In 2015 the topic will be the Lyme disease invasion of the Adirondack Region.

CTA Block