The purpose of this study was to determine what knowledge and skills are currently being taught in beginning microbiology in junior/community colleges in Texas. This information was determined from a survey questionnaire sent to junior/community college teachers of beginning microbiology. Also surveyed were senior college teacher who teach courses which require beginning microbiology as a prerequisite. This additional survey was to determine what preparation is needed for students progressing from beginning microbiology to upper level microbiology courses. Information gathered from the two populations of teachers was then compared to determine if any differences exist in the depth of coverage assigned by these teachers.

The purpose of the study was to compare the academic stress of freshmen in a community college with that of freshmen in a university. An additional purpose was to determine if gender, ethnicity, or semester course load was related to perceived academic stress. The sample consisted of a total of 303 university and community college freshmen from English and Psychology classes at the University of North Texas and Richland Community College during the spring semester, 1989. The instrument that was administered to these volunteer students was the Academic Stress Test, a 35-item checklist of possible academic stressors. The students were asked to check the items which were perceived by them to be stressful and had occurred during the current semester. The T-statistic was used to analyze the total mean stress score for each variable being considered. Multiple regression was used to determine if there was any possibility that the variables might have a predictive effect for academic stress. It was found that for these freshmen students there was a significant difference between the perceived academic stress of community college freshmen and university freshmen. The mean academic stress score for university freshmen was higher than the mean for community college freshmen. …