2019-31

Arizona State University
University Senate

Senate Motion #2019-31

Motion Introduced by: Curriculum and Academic Programs Committee, Lili Wang, Chair

Date of First Reading: January 28, 2019

Date of Second Reading: February 25, 2019

Title of Motion: Request from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences – School of Life Sciences– for the establishment of an undergraduate certificate – Computational Life Sciences

Action Requested: This curricular proposal has received all college, school, unit and university administrative approvals, and is being presented to the Senate for review and voting decision.   

Rationale: Big data is a challenge for life sciences undergraduate majors. The School of Life Sciences has faculty that spans a diverse background of scientific disciplines in computational life sciences and ethics who can provide expert training to students who will benefit from increased computational understanding as applied uniquely to life sciences data. New and diverse data types are emerging in the life sciences including biomarker data, long-term monitoring data, longitudinal samples, genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomics data for human and non-human samples (including viruses, plants, animals, bacteria, the environment, and ecosystems). Further, each of these types of life sciences data is only growing in size as technology increases.

 By completing the undergraduate Certificate in Computational Life Sciences, our undergraduate students will be able to understand these life sciences data formats, understand how to combine and analyze life sciences data types, and discuss the ethical implications of biological data.