Vancouver Summer Program – New Courses offered in Summer 2015 by the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
The Vancouver Summer Program (VSP) gives international students the opportunity to partake in courses while learning about Canadians practices and culture. The academic program runs for 4 weeks from mid July to mid August.
Students enrolled in the VSP take 2 courses, each course consisting of ~39 hours of class time. Classes are meant to be interactive and as such consist of a mixture of lecture as well as group work and in-class discussion. Although the 2 courses are equivalent to six credits based on duration, they are not UBC accredited courses, although the home institutions have the ability to assign their own credits and the performance of students is formally assessed.
The intense summer program began as a pilot in 2012 and expanded successfully in 2013 and again in 2014. This coming summer (2015) the program has expanded again and will feature 34 different 2-course packages offered by different departments and faculties. The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has joined the VSP in 2015 with a 2-course package. The two courses will be entitled: “Environmental Biochemistry” and “Molecular Mechanisms of Disease”. The concepts and these specific courses have been spear-headed by two of our instructors, Scott Covey and Mike Krisinger. The Vancouver Summer Program has also come at a time when our postdoctoral research fellows have expressed a growing interest in gaining teaching experience. We are therefore very pleased that two postdoctoral fellows and one “soon-to-be-fellow” have joined the team that will be preparing and presenting these two new courses. It is most encouraging that this two-course package has attracted very solid enrollment in this first year.
Further details can be found at the specific VSP website: http://vancouversummerprogram.ubc.ca/.