› At IMI, we capture the strategic nature of our curriculum design with a familar chess-piece metaphor, where core courses are represented by the pawns, and elective courses have more specialist roles to play. Here is the full board layout.
› Compare the chess pieces now by clicking on the image. Which elective course will you choose? Image source
It’s always important to emphasise the value of an individually tailored experience whenever you are making an important personal investment. Your Master’s education with IMI is just such a once-in-a-lifetime investment, and the Chess Piece Metaphor is a simple, familiar and memorable stylistic concept we have adopted to add a strategic favour to the curriculum, and to help draw our students’ attention to the importance of the growing repertoire of in-house electives.
Since, in chess, Pawns are the foot soldiers, we have identified core courses—that elsewhere at IMI are mandatory for the Master of Biotechnology Program—as either White Pawns (BioPh stream) or Black Pawns (DHT stream). As the BioPh stream is the elder of the two streams, and came first in a temporal sense, it plays as White. IMI’s more recent, innovative DHT stream historically came second, so Black is its colour. Whichever stream, all of the pawns are of equal value, and a full set (either White or Black) must be collected by students at MBiotech in order to graduate with their Master’s degree.
But what of the electives? These are advanced courses that offer all of our IMI students special options, in the same way that the more powerful chess pieces have their own unique abilities on the board. The Knight can jump over opponents, the Bishops move diagonally, and the King and Queen can move in any direction.
A judicious combination of these pieces is essential to win the game. In the same manner, all of our electives have their own distinctive features that commend them, and our students need to make strategic choices about which ones to take, depending on their prospective career goals.
Is Black Knight more important to you than White Bishop? Only you can decide. At IMI, you choose your strategy!
› Compare the different chess pieces now on IMI’s electives page.