An MIT Revolution in the Undergraduate Teaching of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

The Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences is undertaking a major revision of its undergraduate curriculum and culture of teaching. The most recent visiting committee identified weaknesses in our educational program as the primary problem to be addressed by the incoming department leadership. There were three key issues: 1) the degree of overlap in the material covered across classes; 2) the failure of upper level classes to build on introductory material and progress to more advanced topics, and 3) a lack of quantitative rigor, leaving students inadequately prepared for advanced coursework.
The challenge is to show how undergraduates can be deeply educated in: key phenomena about the mind and the brain, quantitative methods for describing the mechanisms that underlie those phenomena, the procedures by which we discover new phenomena and new mechanisms, and the myriad connections of that knowledge with fields including physics, biology, engineering, mathematics, linguistics, and economics. Concomitant with this curricular challenge, the project will establish a culture of excellence in teaching within our department, similar to the successes of other great MIT departments.