While the Special Meeting of the Academic Council (AC) on Thursday is expected to pass all 12 revised syllabi placed before it,with elected representatives of teachers outnumbered by nearly one to six,doubts have been raised about the dilution of some courses. Teachers are particularly worried over the syllabi of BSc Zoology and Botany (Hons). Twelve of a total of 24 papers are common to both courses. At present,Zoology students have to study 10 papers offered by the Zoology department,four each offered by the Chemistry and Botany departments,one paper offered by the English department and a paper in History of Science. The History of Science paper does not figure in the revised syllabi. This has never happened before. This will not only dilute the Honours system but also destroy the Major-Minor system proposed initially, said a senior Botany professor. A student cannot choose his/her Minor subjects either,as was indicated in the December 18 document of the Empowered Committee on the Implementation of the Semester System. At the moment,it looks like Zoology will be the default Minor subject for Botany students,and vice versa. Large parts of the preambles of both syllabi are echoed verbatim as well. The contents have been drawn up to accommodate the widening horizons of the discipline of Biological Sciences. A special feature of this program has been the introduction of six new papers on Cell and Molecular Biology and Genetics that cover major disciplines in newer areas of Biological Sciences where tremendous progress has been made during the past decade, state both preambles. A professor of Zoology pointed out: We revised our syllabus only three years ago,and all these topics were included then. Except in Biotechnology paper ,nothing is new. In fact,large parts of that paper are currently being taught as part of another course. The Botany syllabus looks like a syllabus for the BSc Molecular Biology course. They have taken a paper on Cell Biology that we currently offer and split it into four, a professor said. Professors accuse an influential faculty member of the Zoology department for the abnormally high percentage of content from the Molecular Biology course. We have sacrificed the fundamentals to cater to some vague industrial standards. Taxonomy and Entomology have been dropped, a Zoology faculty member said. Common for all Science students* Computational Skills* Technical Writing and Communication in English* Mathematics and Statistics Now,common to Zoology,Botany* Chemistry I&II * Cell Biology I&II * Molecular Biology I&II * Genetics * Genomics-I&II
