Redesign and process of reforming an existing undergraduate Nutritional Sciences program

Abstract

Due to current and upcoming needs in the discipline and accreditation, the Nutritional Sciences faculty at a major university reformed their curriculum using backward design. As part of this process, they developed new learning outcomes that aligned to the institutional learning outcomes and mapped these new outcomes across the major's required courses. Also, they reorganized the existing major's single focus on biomedical nutrition into an academic program with a core curriculum and three concentrations (biomedical and molecular nutrition, global health and nutrition, and public health nutrition). The faculty designed new core and concentration courses and modified existing courses to distribute the essential learning across the major curriculum. Additionally, the committee created two service courses to fill voids in nutrition education for nonmajors. Despite abundant literature on backward and curriculum design, this process produced important learning about how to conduct and implement curriculum reform in a science-based discipline.