Five years from now, the Division of Biological Sciences intends to be one of the best fundamental biology programs in the country. It will do that by emphasizing improved education programs, aligning faculty and staff growth with campuswide initiatives, and building high-quality work spaces. At the top of its list is graduate and postdoctoral education, says division dean Mark McNamee. "If you want to recruit and retain the best faculty members and have them invest in first-rate academic programs, you have to have a very strong graduate program. And those faculty and their graduate students will produce the strong undergraduate education we want in the classroom and the lab." The division outlines 10 specific steps for improving graduate education, including high priority for graduate teaching assignments, increased financial support for the best students, expanded assessments of graduate programs and increased attention to postdoctoral researchers. Because the campus has historically emphasized the life sciences, and because the division fully revised its undergraduate curriculum and revamped its internal organization in 1993, the division's new academic plan builds on a strong foundation, McNamee notes. But it will be implemented at a time of great upheaval in the field. "Biological sciences research and education are undergoing dramatic changes as the genomics revolution opens up new ways to probe and understand biological systems," says the plan. "The management and analysis of information and the integration of knowledge from the molecular through the behavioral and systems levels are emerging as major challenges." Another of the division's top priorities is to make each of its undergraduate majors one of the five best in the country and the best in the UC system. The plan identifies seven specific steps, including: * Increase support for courses that include laboratory sections and field work; * Increase attention to quantitative reasoning and writing skills; * Continue working to reduce upper-division classes to about 100 students per section; * Improve assessment of student preparation and performance; * Develop a required capstone course for seniors emphasizing integration of knowledge and effective communication; * Develop new options for honors seminars and courses, especially for upper-division students; * Develop new majors and minors at the interface of biology and engineering. Faculty growth for the division was prioritized according to the needs of the new campuswide initiatives and to what the plan calls "opportunities for distinction" -- that is, "investments in areas where we feel we can quickly and successfully establish research and teaching prominence." Those opportunities are driven, in part, by the campus's intentions to establish a new Center for Genetics and Development and a Center for Comparative and Functional Genomics, and to expand the Center for Neuroscience. The top-priority recruitments in each section include: * Microbiology: key positions in the new gene centers and in environmental microbiology and physiology, which should enable that section to achieve national prominence; * Plant biology: a few new positions in integrative plant biology and in genomics that should make it the top department of its kind in the country; * Neurobiology, physiology and behavior: expanding the already strong neuroscience component, which provides "the clearest path to immediate distinction" for the section, and growing the exercise-science faculty in physiology and integrative human biology. * Molecular and cellular biology: a number of new hires for growth and to replace 11 expected retirements, with emphases on proteomics and biochemistry. * Evolution and ecology: four positions in the next five years for this outstanding section, which is already considered the best in the nation. This unit is unusual on campus -- it has expressed an explicit goal to limit its overall size, which now stands at 19. Altogether, the division plan identifies 44 faculty recruitment opportunities, 24 of them new positions, in the next five years. It also refers to its recent success in hiring new women faculty members. Of 23 hires from 1994 though 1998, 10 were women. The academic plan notes that achieving all its goals will require high-quality space, state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, and excellent staff support. Its goals for improved space and equipment include continuing the phased remodel of Briggs Hall, going forward with the planned Science Laboratory Building, constructing a proposed new neuroscience building, and developing the genetics and genomics centers.