To the College of Life Sciences, and to the School of Learning and Teaching: our job is to help you get the best out of your time here in Dundee – to support your learning, and help you develop the skills and knowledge you need to succeed ‘out there’, whatever it is you want to do.
Everything we do involves the life sciences, the study of living things and how they interact with their environment: from understanding the effect we have on the planet, to finding ways to deal with population size, whether it’s the growth of the human one, or the decline of others; the treatment and defeat of disease in plants and animals (which of course includes us!) – dealing with the growth of age-related disease like cancer, diabetes, arthritis: all important in our society - to addressing problems is some of the world’s poorest areas, like African sleeping sickness and malaria.
While we currently have many named degrees, they fall into two main groupings – the biomedical degrees, including anatomical sciences and forensic anthropology, which focus on the human, and the biomolecular, including biochemistry and molecular biology which take the wider view of biology – all include a broad curriculum in the early years, covering the basics of the life sciences, including chemistry and maths, because you can’t be a biologist today without strong numeracy and chemical skills.
Gradually, as you spend time here, you will discover what some of the stranger names mean, and will be choosing yourselves which of these to follow at levels 3 and 4. One important point I would like to make is that the flexible curriculum that we have designed in Dundee allows students to keep their options open until well into their programme. Whatever the degree subject you enrol for, you can change your mind later in the light of experience.
As with all subjects, the more there is to know, the more subdivided it gets: while you will have studied biology, zoology and botany at school, those are broad terms that cover lots of sub-disciplines: as you go through your degree, you’ll be able to look more deeply at areas of the life sciences that come to interest you. While basic biology is important, because that sets the environment, here at Dundee we specialise in the biomolecular and biomedical, because that’s where the major advances are taking place – understanding mechanisms, so we can better understand our world and how it works, and change it if need be.
What that means is that, by level 3 and level 4, you will be being taught by some of the strongest life science research scientists in the world: being taught how to ask questions, where to find answers, and what today’s critical life science issues are: research and teaching are managed separately here in Dundee, because that’s the way we can do world class research, and give you the best education possible.
And our students agree:
A great strength at Dundee is that what students say, we listen to, whether it’s good or bad: built into our teaching is a strong system of feedback through the Student Representative Council, part of the Dundee University Student Association.
Enjoy your time here, and go out to the world prepared!
