Secondary Education

The College Core courses are designed to insure that all students, regardless of their major, will have basic writing skills and an understanding of the fundamentals of a wide variety of fields. Accordingly, two "Composition" courses are required and selection of one course in each of seven General Education categories is required. The College Core includes a total of 27 credit hours.

CPN 100	Academic Writing I	(3)
CPN 101	Academic Writing II	(3)
GE 1	American State and Society	(3)
GE 2	Prejudice and Discrimination	(3)
GE 3	Contrasting Cultures	(3)
GE 4	Fine Arts	(3)
GE 5	History and the History of Ideas	(3)
GE 6	Literature	(3)
GE 7	Science, Technology and Human Affairs	(3)

The Biology Core:

The Department of Biological Sciences requires students to take a specific group of courses generally referred to as the Biology Core Courses. The core courses are required because the Department feels that the knowledge acquired in these courses is basic to any biology degree. While the Biology Core is modified for those concentrating in Adolescence Education to include Field Biology and Physical Geology and exclude Calculus B, the core courses are designed to provide every student with a broad, comprehensive background in biology. The Biology Core in this concentration carries a total of 51 credit hours.

The core courses are listed below with their course number and the number of credit hours each carries.

BIO 201	Biological Sciences I	(4)
BIO 202	Biological Sciences Ii	(4)
BIO 210	Cellular Biology	(4)
BIO 310	Field Biology	(3)
BIO 312	Genetics	(4)
BIO 319	Biological Literature	(1)
BIO 412	Ecology	(4)
CHE 221	General Chemistry I	(4)
CHE 222	General Chemistry II	(4)
CHE 301	Organic Chemistry I	(4)
GLY 261	Physical Geology	(4)
MAT121 or 201 or GLY 281	Calculus A or Statistical Methods or Data Analysis in Natural Science	(3)
PHY 105	Elementary Mechanics, Heat and Matter	(4)
PHY 106	Elementary Electricity and Sound	(4)
	*or alternative physics sequence*
PHY 201	Principles of Physics I	(4)
PHY 202	Principles of Physics II	(4)

Professional Preparation

Students in the Adolescence Education: Biology spend significant effort in learning about and preparing to teach in the secondary schools. A total of 32 credit hours is required in this category. It is important for students to pay close attention to the prerequisites for these courses to make certain that they can be taken in the correct sequence and without any delay in graduation. In addition there are particular requirements of this concentration which should be kept in mind:

To be eligible for AED 445: Student Teaching, a GPA of 2.5 is required in the professional areas, in the major, in related science/math and overall. A minimum of 24 credit hours in Biology and 22 credit hours in the related science/math areas is needed. PSY 101; AED 391, 442, 443, 444; BIO 201, 202, 210, 312; CHE 221, 222; GLY 261; and PHY 105 or 201 must be completed before the student teaching experience. There are additional requirements (state examinations, identification and reporting of child abuse and maltreatment, alcohol and drug abuse education, and foreign language requirements) for New York State teaching certification. These can be found in the current college catalogue. As these requirements can be a bit confusing at first, remember that consultation with a faculty advisor can be very helpful.

PSY 101	General Psychology	(3)
PSY 232	Adolescent Psychology	(3)
PSY 350 or SHH 300	Psychology of Language or Normal Language Development	(3)
AED 391	Introduction to Adolescence Education	(3)
AED 442	Methods I: Teaching the Sciences	(3)
AED 443	Methods II: Teaching the Sciences	(3)
AED 444	Laboratory Practicum	(1)
AED 445	Student Teaching	(14)
EDU 449	Literacy in the Middle and Secondary Schools	(3)
HLH 199	Critical School Health Issues	(2)

As part of New York State's requirements for teacher certification, students in Adolescence Education - Biology (7-12) take the following teacher certification exams:

The Biology Electives

A minimum of 6 credit hours of biology electives are required. If you would like to see a list of the biology electives offered see the navigation bar to the left.

Free Electives

Free electives are courses offered by any department. These give students the opportunity to explore areas about which they are curious or in which they would like to gain more knowledge. This category may include more biology courses to go beyond the minimum requirements for the degree. The number of free elective credits is 8 hours.

Career-related Information

Each year, the American Association for Employment in Education (AAEE) prepares a report on teacher supply and demand in the United States. The report summarizes the demand for education by 48 certification fields and 11 geographic regions of the country on a 1-5 scale. It is the only national report of its kind, and the population surveyed in its report includes all colleges and universities in the US that have teacher education programs. Copies of the report are maintained in the Career Development Office and are provided to individual Cortland education graduate students upon request. Departments can obtain copies of the report by contacting AAEE or visiting the AAEE web site.

SUMMARY

The minimum number of credit hours required for any degree at Cortland is 124, broken down, as one can see, in the categories above. Another way to get a sense of the requirements is to divide the total number of credits by the typical 8 semesters students are enrolled in college. This comes to 15.5 hours a semester. Obviously, this is an average and one can have some light semesters and other semesters with heavier loads. Also, students may take a course or two during the summers to reduce the load a bit during the normal academic year.