Perhaps Dan Marien has adequately responded to your question and has done so
using perspectives from biology and physics. Let me do so from the perspective
of a chemist and restrict my discussion to Organic. When I took Organic
Chemistry in 1944, the first semester covered all monofunctional compounds along
with stereochemistry. Reaction mechanisms and spectroscopy had not yet made
their way into Organic Chemistry courses at most institutions; conformational
analysis had not even been invented. It was only in the second semester that one
learned about bi- and polyfunctional molecules, i.e., about carbohydrates, fats,
proteins and all of the other molecules of most interest to biochemistry and
medicine. Each of these semester courses, including laboratory, carried just
four credit hours, but it was not too much later that semester hour inflation
struck. I was both amused and amazed to discover that the 45 semester hours of
chemistry that I had had as an undergraduate had, in less than a decade,
inflated to 73 semester hours with no change in the 128 required for graduation
and that, for example, the first semester of Organic Chemistry now carried 8
semester hours instead of 4. What I sometimes remind my students of is the can
of salmon unchanged in size but now containing significantly less salmon.
Unfortunately, students, rather than feeling cheated by how much less they are
getting for their tuition dollar, seem happy at not having to learn so much. But
what is most interesting is that medical schools still often required 8 semester
hours of Organic Chemistry, but this now represented one, rather than two,
semesters and, as noted above, left out the most relevant topics.
The same thing is now occurring with respect to substitution of the kind you
mention of Bioorganic Chemistry (or Biochemistry) for the second semester of
Organic. Can this work? It depends on how it is taught and if the first
semester, as you indicate, "is intended for students who are willing and able to
move quickly into advanced coursework." But, like Dan, I strongly recommend that
students take the full year of Organic with lab. I also recommend that they take
Biochemistry since so many of my students in medical school report back how much
they appreciate having had a solid course in Biochemistry in college.
A more complete discussion of this and related topics appeared in my article
entitled, "Advising Premeds on Scientific Prerequisites," which appeared in the
Spring 1997/Vol. 17 issue of The Advisor on pp. 25-29.
Edward N. Trachtenberg, Editor, Seventh Edition
Premedical Advisor's Reference Manual
Chemistry Department
Clark University
950 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01610-1477
508-793-7119 (office)
508-793-8861 (fax)
etrachtenberg@clarku.edu
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