The 'new biology' and the biology department

The aim of the Department of Biology at the University of Malta is to provide our students with the best possible teaching programmes so as to give them a sound background to the subject as well as to provide them with the necessary skills to enable them to effectively contribute towards Malta's changing needs and requirements.

All this is to be achieved within very tight constraints of financial and infrastructural resources. Pierre Schembri Wismayer has recently given us a gratuitous opinion ("Managing the new biology", September 17) on whether or not the Department of Biology is achieving its aims.

The fact that Dr Schembri Wismayer is not a graduate of the Department of Biology, has never visited the department, has never participated in any of its activities and has never discussed the matter with any members of its academic staff is besides the point.

I firmly believe that being a public-funded entity, my department must stand up to public scrutiny at any time and must be able to adapt itself whenever and wherever the need arises. However, if any criticism is not based on solid facts, then it is bound to be counter-productive and will fail to produce the desired results. So, let's get the facts right.

Since its reconstitution in the late 1980s, the Department of Biology has been offering a joint biology/chemistry B.Sc. degree as well as postgraduate degree programmes up to doctoral level.

The first group of B.Sc. graduates terminated their studies in 1990. While every effort is made to address the most relevant and newly emerging aspects of the subject at any time, the compromise with maintaining a fairly broad base in the biological sciences has to be constantly kept in line with the needs of a small country such as Malta.

We do not produce "mainly marine biologists and teachers", as Dr Schembri Wismayer suggests. We produce graduates with a broad overview of all of biology, which they can apply to any field, including biotechnology, fisheries, agriculture, environmental protection and management, conservation of biological resources and biodiversity, microbiology, marine biology and a whole list of other fields!

We can only hope to satisfy Malta's diverse requirements in the biological sciences by avoiding the type of specialisation in any single field, as Dr Schembri-Wismayer suggests, while at the same time equipping our graduates with the necessary basic skills and approaches that allow our graduates to specialise in particular fields if they so wish.

Have we succeeded in doing this? We are currently building a database on our past students that includes information on their employment profile and posts occupied.

Some very interesting results are already available.

Since 1990, over 240 students graduated in biology and chemistry. Of these, almost 70 per cent chose to take up an elective project in biology during their final year; 31 per cent of them continued for a Masters degree, while almost 16 per cent followed (or are following) Ph.D and M.Phil. courses at our university or elsewhere.

This brings the total percentage of graduates with first degree in biology who take up postgraduate studies to 47 per cent! Evidently, postgraduate courses by their very nature must be highly specialised and there is every evidence to prove (including external examiners' reports) that the graduates we are producing have absolutely no difficulty in following such more advanced courses with great success.

Of all biology elective students to date (those that carry our a final year research project in biology), preliminary data shows that about 24 per cent took up a teaching position; 28 per cent went to private industry; 19 per cent are in academia/research at our university and elsewhere and 26 per cent have taken up key scientific administrative jobs with various government departments and authorities (fisheries, agriculture, the Water Services Corporation, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, the Malta Resources Authority, the Drainage Department, etc.). Incidentally, four have taken up a religious vocation.

We are producing mainly teachers and marine biologists, aren't we?

Now, what about biotechnology? We fully recognise the fact that this should play a much greater role in our economy and it is certainly not any fault of my department that the situation is as it is.

I am sure that Dr Schembri Wismayer is aware of the fact that he works in laboratories which are in good part staffed by our graduates. He has singled out Charles Saliba as one who with his biotech companies has shown that it "is possible to succeed with very limited resources in our small island, having adequate training and using one's own entrepreneurial skills to develop an idea". Excellent!

As Dr Saliba would be the first to acknowledge, it was through the Department of Biology that in the first instance the companies mentioned were attracted to Malta.

This, in turn, paved the way for the developments mentioned through continuous and close collaboration with the same department and, no doubt, others, given the need for an interdisciplinary approach.

A significant amount of R & D data generated by these companies is through research students registered with the Biology Department. So, we are doing it right after all!

Before I conclude, I would also like to mention the fact that all of the five full-time members of academic staff in my department are actively involved in research fields which are directly relevant to Malta's needs.

These include fisheries biology and marine aquaculture; marine pollution and environmental quality; local flora, fauna and ecology; population genetics; assessment of biodiversity and conservation of biological resources.

Our students actively participate in our research programmes. This has greatly helped their academic preparation as well as professional skills which will serve them in good stead when they go on to occupy key positions within the private and public sectors.

It is sometimes claimed that research at the University of Malta is not sufficiently well publicised and that research data and results are not accessible to the potential end-user. While there may be some truth in this claim, I believe that for the past 10 years the Department of Biology has done its utmost to publicise its research data and information, both through publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as through its annual biological symposia and the associated abstracts booklets that we produce. I hope to see Dr Schembri Wismayer at our Biology Symposium 2003, to be held on December 6.

Certainly, there is room for improvement in our teaching and research and we are currently going through an internal exercise of restructuring our B.Sc. (Hons.) degree programme.

As head of department, I welcome any contribution to such an exercise, provided that it will be translated into real benefits to our students and our country and not to the sort of "forced marriage" that is being advocated by Dr Schembri Wismayer.

At a time when the university authorities instruct us to utilise only a certain percentage of our (already low) recurrent funds, we would be more than glad to make use of all possible laboratory and other resources from other faculties. This makes economic sense.

We also support Dr Schembri Wismayer's plea to the university (and to the government) to invest in science and science education. In the meantime, we will continue to fulfil our role within the given constraints. And we will do so by avoiding any myopic vision and by producing graduates who are fully capable of adapting to new circumstances and to satisfy the wide range of national requirements as they unfold.

Prof. Axiak is head, Department of Biology, University of Malta