Biology: Concentration in Physiology
Bachelor of Science
About this program
The Bachelor of Science in Biology: Concentration in Physiology gives you a strong grounding in how living organisms function — covering animals and plants. You study how body systems work, backed by chemistry and physics courses. You gain skills in scientific thinking and learn to design experiments, interpret data, and link structure with function. This concentration suits future health professionals or graduate students and helps you plan a path based on your career and academic goals.
Program Curriculum and Requirements
Program Scope
The rapid growth of knowledge about the nature and function of biological mechanisms has made physiology a corner-stone of the biological and medical sciences. This program offers training in the study of physiological systems in animals (including humans) and plants.
A concentration in Physiology provides students with the necessary theoretical and practical background to be well prepared for careers in healthcare and research. The degree offers considerable flexibility in both the lower and upper division, designed specifically to incorporate common pre-health prerequisite courses (like an extended sequence of organic chemistry) into the progression of coursework while still preserving an on-time graduation. For this reason, Physiology is popular with pre-med and pre-health students.
The Physiology program at San Francisco State University is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of the basic sciences, and an opportunity to obtain either a general overview of the field or to specialize. Emphases in Physiology include the neurosciences, reproductive and endocrine physiology, comparative and ecological physiology, and aging.
In all of our concentrations, research experiences in the labs of our world-class faculty and instructors are an integral part of student training. Hands-on experiences in our research labs, through the Biology Undergraduate Research Program (BURP), prepare our graduates for high-level jobs in industry or further training toward a higher degree.
Program Learning Outcomes
- Understanding the process of science: Students can design an experiment with the appropriate control groups to test a hypothesis.
- Quantitative reasoning: Students can interpret a graph or dataset to determine if the results of an experiment support or reject a hypothesis.
- Relationship between science and society: Students can weigh the costs and benefits to society of the use of recent scientific and technological developments
- Evolution: Students can explain the role that variation between individuals plays in the processes of natural selection and evolution.
- Relationship between structure and function: Students can explain how a change in the structural characteristics of a molecule, tissue, or organism will affect its function.
- Information flow and storage: Students can describe the mechanisms of information flow in classical and molecular genetics and predict the outcomes of crosses.
- Pathways and transformation of matter and energy: Students can explain how a carbon molecule flows through a biological process or system.
- Systems (i.e. Living systems are interconnected and interacting): Students can predict the consequences of how a change in one aspect of a biological or complex system will affect other aspects of the system.