The Department was established in September 1989 within the Faculty of Science & Arts with the aim of awarding a B.Sc. degree in Applied Biological Sciences, in addition to offering service course of general biology to other faculties.
The B.Sc. program was designed to provide interdisciplinary training in applied biology, and to familiarize the student with a variety of traditional and modern techniques used in biology.
The aim of the program is to enable the student to work in different fields (as education, food and environmental projects) and analysis in different scientific centers as Ministry of Health, higher education, public security as well public and private sectors.
The Department started its M.Sc. program in 1996 to meet the increasing demand on highly qualified graduates in the field of Applied Biological Sciences in Jordan and abroad.
Department Objectives:
The long-range goals for the Department of Applied Biological Sciences are to achieve
recognition as a center of excellence both in its teaching and research programs at national and international levels.
A substantial emphasis will be placed on research but without sacrificing the current quality of graduate and undergraduate education. The future research thrust of the Department will be in the areas of cellular and molecular biology of microbes, plants and plant-microbe interactions, but without neglecting our long-standing strengths in some other areas.
THE FUTURE:
The long-range goals for the department of Applied Biological Sciences are to achieve
recognition as a center of excellence both in its teaching and research programs at national and international levels. A substantial emphasis will be placed on research but without sacrificing the current quality of graduate and undergraduate education.
The future research thrust of the department will be in the areas of cellular and molecular biology of microbes, plants and plant-microbe interactions, but without neglecting our long-standing strengths in some other areas.
In order to reach these goals, we will depend on increased productivity and competitiveness by established faculty members. Furthermore, we also need development of strong research programs which will be easier when we fill future positions with people who have high potential for research success as well as teaching ability.
Alongside with this, we need a department with a good administrative structure which will provide support for the faculty members and also a university which allows the faculty to be successful in their efforts.
Thus, it will be necessary to make substantial changes in several non-mutually exclusive areas that impact on research success, e.g. the graduate and undergraduate teaching programs, the graduate research program, faculty publications and extramural funding, incentive and reward for successful faculty, and department office organization and management. We anticipate that the Department of Applied Biology will have a faculty of approximately 20 along with 30 graduate students by 2001.
To obtain the projected number of graduate students that we project, the department will need to augment its recruitment procedures by increasing stipends, reducing teaching assignments and accepting more students from foreign countries.
Through new technologies of Biotechnology, the new curriculum in Molecular biology, improved ( or streamlined ) curricula in Biology, the Department of Applied Biological Sciences will be in an excellent position to educate students for the jobs of the future, solve basic and applied research problems, and to extend new information to the citizens of Jordan.