Description:
<jats:p>Every year, we welcome 3 million new undergraduates to US colleges and universities, approximately one in six of whom begin their collegiate careers with premedical intentions. Thus, approximately 500,000 students annually enroll in inorganic chemistry. However, only about 165,000 go on to take organic chemistry, and in 2008, only 42,200 applied for 18,000 slots in US medical schools, thereby producing 17,300 new US MDs in 2012. This premedical funnel has a huge effect on the organization of undergraduate colleges and the education of nearly half a million undergraduates per year who are not going to become doctors. The redesign of the 2015 MCAT was therefore an opportunity not only to think about what courses premedical students ought to take but to consider how to prepare larger populations of undergraduates with foundational molecular knowledge. Premedical students now almost universally have access to a biochemistry course either at their home campus or online. Accordingly, while medical schools are admitting students for fall 2016 enrollment who have largely taken and been examined in biochemistry and molecular biology, the basic science coursework in the first two years of medical school has simultaneously been condensed in a manner that makes it difficult to teach metabolism and genomics at the advanced levels that might have been enabled by a better prepared entering class. In this talk, I will address approaches to offer molecular education to undergraduate and health professional students that have the potential to improve our students’ appreciation of data analysis, drug and biomolecule reactivity, enzymes, metabolism and genomics.</jats:p><jats:p><jats:bold>Support or Funding Information</jats:bold></jats:p><jats:p>Educational activities supported by National Science Foundation award CHE1404147 and the Roy J. Carver Trust.</jats:p>