A Brief History and Background of the BIGs Program
In 2000 at UW-Madison, SyMBiosis (Science and Math for Biology Students), a seminar for faculty from Chemistry, Math, Physics, Statistics and the Biological Sciences, met regularly to discuss how to prepare students interested in the biological sciences in the foundational sciences and math needed for modern research. Biology is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and quantitative, and biologists of the future will face the challenge of solving complex problems that require knowledge from several disciplines. Furthermore, the information explosion has made it impossible to impart the vast amount of current and ever-changing knowledge to students in a traditional teaching format. Preparing biology students for the reality of research in the future means teaching them to take responsibility for their own learning and collaborate successfully with others whose knowledge and skills are complimentary. Preparing biology students means enabling faculty and academic staff to experiment with implementing new teaching strategies.
The SyMBiosis group discussed the educational needs of biology students and came up with a variety of approaches to promote cross-disciplinary thinking in students. The plan for the BIGs program grew out of this discussion and SyMBiosis participants proposed a freshman course linking math and chemistry with a small topical biology seminar course. At the same time, a campus-wide initiative was underway. As part of the UW-Madison Strategic Plan (Plan 2008), First-Year Interest Groups (FIGs) were developed as a means to create learning communities to foster a more diverse and inclusive academic environment. Alignment of the BIGs program with this UW initiative was a logical next step and so in 2003, one year after the first BIGs were offered, BIGs integrated with the First-Year Interest Group program and became BioFIGs.
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