BIOLOGY 202 LAB SECTIONS A04, A06 SEMESTER SYLLABUS SPRING, 2017 I. Instructor

Dr. Carl S. Luciano, 19 Weyandt, 357-4462, email: [email protected] II. Office Hours

Spring 2017. M: 130-330 T: 100-300 W 100-200

My office is located in the basement of Weyandt Hall on the side that is away from Oakland Avenue. You should feel free to stop in at any time if you have a question or a problem with Biology 202 material.

If you have a question which can be answered over the phone or by e-mail, don’t hesitate to call or write.

III. Required Text:

(1) Biology 202 Spring 2017 Lab Guide available at Pro Packet

IV. Other Required Materials

You will need a lab notebook, for which a loose-leaf folder or ring binder is recommended. You will need a felt-tip marker (Sharpie) for labeling glassware, and a small metric system ruler. You will need materials for poster production at the end of the semester.

V. Attendance

You are required to attend all laboratory meetings. I will take attendance at each lab meeting and I will use laboratory attendance as a factor in determining your lab grade, in accordance with University guidelines governing required attendance. An unexcused absence (no prior discussion or medical/family emergency excuse) from laboratory will result in a grade of zero for that day and will reduce your grade in lab by 1/13 of the total grade since there are 13 class meetings in the semester. This is equivalent to approximately 2.5% of the total class grade. Attendance at the first laboratory meeting will not count toward your grade and you are allowed one (1) unexcused absence during the semester. All work that you miss must be made up and you are to take the responsibility and initiative to schedule makeup work.

Due to the difficulty in setting up experiments, it will in no case be possible to make up a missed experiment unless you can obtain permission to attend another lab during the same week as your absence. This will be unlikely because all lab sections are fully enrolled and thus all lab seats are taken. Plan instead on not missing class. IF YOU KNOW YOU MUST MISS AN IMPORTANT CLASS MEETING, YOU ARE MUCH BETTER OFF TO LET ME KNOW IN ADVANCE!!!!!!!

I will judge requests for make up work on a case by case basis and will expect to see some documentation for issues such as illnesses, university business, military assignments, court dates and so on. If you know that you have to be away on an important date it is better to let me know in advance so that we can work out arrangements for make up work without a rush.

If you are absent unexpectedly and want to make up missed work then you must take the responsibility to initiate a plan for the make up work by contacting me, within one week of the missed assignment.

We will handle arrangements for make up work using email to confirm discussions and plans. This way we will all have an electronic copy of all conversations and decisions.

Please note that any make up assignments may or may not be identical to the assignment that was missed.

I will not give a high priority to make up requests that involve social events, family gatherings or a desire to leave town early at the end of the semester.

There will from time to time be graded in-class writing assignments and also class discussions. Therefore, although I will not take attendance in class, it is to your advantage to attend all regular class meetings.

VI. Late Submissions

Without the instructor's prior permission, no assignments may be turned in after the due date and time. Any assigned work submitted after the due date or time (with instructor permission) will automatically be penalized at least 20% (i.e. a 100% becomes an 80%, a 90% becomes a 70%, and so on).

VII. Class Objectives

My objectives in lab for the next thirteen weeks are to show you how science is done and to let you do some science. These objectives are set against the scope of the BI 202 course as a whole and thus our scientific activities will be defined by the boundaries of modern cell and molecular biology.

2 The objective of BI 202 Lab is most emphatically NOT to illustrate lecture material, to demonstrate scientific laws or to train you in the use of scientific equipment. While it is true that we will have to learn to use the paraphrenalia of science (e.g. microscopes, spectrophotometers and so on) in order to conduct experiments, these items of equipment are simply tools in the same sense that a hammer is a tool for a carpenter. Do not confuse the means with the end in our intellectual enterprise.

The laboratory portion of this course may be quite different from any you have had in the past. Its purpose is to provide you an opportunity to learn about science by working as scientists. This means that you may not find in your lab manual a series of exercises to perform exactly as written (a cookbook). Rather, you may find a set of instructions for using different instruments and performing various procedures or a starting point from which to build your own ideas and ask your own questions. It will be your job to design experiments that use the tools and answer the questions about a few simple biological systems.

You will work throughout in groups. This will allow you to perform more complicated experiments than you could on your own and it will provide help in the design of experiments and the evaluation of experimental results.

Writing in appropriate scientific formats will be important in this lab class. Clear writing is evidence of clear thinking. Good science writing is evidence of good science thinking.

Expectations

Your lab grade based upon how well you can take basic background material and apply it to experimental situations, upon how well you can write up and interpret your data, about how well you demonstrate your understanding of background material and upon how well you understand and apply the scientific method. Your level of achievement will be assessed by your performance on quizzes, homework assignments, lab reports and one poster presentation.

In order to do meaningful experiments you must master basic scientific concepts and principles. Your level of understanding of these principles will be tested by some of questions on lab quizzes. Questions may include multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, diagrams, sketches, numerical problems or word problems. Quiz questions will also assess your ability to analyze and explain experimental design.

In order to receive a good grade in lab you must understand how laboratory science is done. That is, you must understand and know how to apply the scientific method. Your level of understanding of the scientific method will be tested by some of the questions on quizzes, by homework assignments on the scientific method and by the quality and rigor of your experimental design.

A vital part of laboratory science is understanding what your results are telling you and communicating your understanding to the scientific community. Therefore you will be

3 required to write short lab reports or parts thereofexplaining and interpreting some of your experiments. As a final product, you will also be required to do a poster describing an experiment of your group’s own design. The quality of your presentations, explanations and interpretations will have an impact on your overall grade.

IX. General Comments

Due to budget time constraints, our activities must be built around existing equipment and facilities. As it turns out this is not a serious problem because the most important ingredient in Principles of CMB Lab is student ingenuity, of which there is usually a generous supply.

The lab sequence is set up in such a way that students take more responsibility as the course proceeds. The first few labs are highly directive and students have relatively little freedom to choose among options. The lab professor has major responsibility for issuing instructions and setting the direction for the entire group of students. As you become more familiar with the laboratory, with the scientific method and with typical class activities, your involvement and responsibility for making important decisions will increase. By the last few weeks of the course, when you are working on your own project, the lab professor will act as a facilitator as much as an instructor.

Since you will initiate and organize so many of your lab activities, you should put some serious thinking into the design and planning of your experiments. Honestly, the more you put in to your work at the planning stage, the more you’ll get out of it in the end.

X. Lab Groups

You will work as a member of a laboratory group or team for much of the semester. Team members will need to apportion responsibility and to work cooperatively in order to design experiments and to complete experimental work in the time we have available. Whenever possible I will utilize Cooperative Learning strategies to maximize your efficiency in lab. I do not plan to take a hand in the organization of lab groups at the beginning of the course, but I reserve the right to adjust the composition of the group during the semester, as necessary.

When I can arrange it in an equitable way, I will utilize your participation in group activities as a way of determining your grade. I may ask your lab partners to provide me with input as to your level of participation, so be sure to accept your full share of responsibilities.

XI. Schedule

The planned class schedule appears on the first page of your lab guide that you can purchase at Pro Packet. You will be notified of any changes.

4 XII. Grading

Your grade in laboratory will count as 25% of your overall grade in BIOL 202. The lab grade will be based on quizzes, lab reports, writing assignments, etc. as follows:

Quizzes: 4 post-lab quizzes at 25 pts each 100 pts Subtotal 100 pts

Writing Assignments: 6-8 assignments at 5-15 pts each 100 pts Subtotal 100 pts

Project: Project Proposal 25 pts Project Presentation and/or writeup 75 pts Subtotal 100 pts

Total for lab = 300 pts

Quizzes will be announced or scheduled in advance and may cover more than one week of activities. Quizzes will be given AFTER the lab work they cover. This provides an opportunity for more reflective answers. Quizzes may contain problems, questions, calculations and/or definitions or they may require you to explain a method, technique, principle or experiment or to draw a diagram. They may require some explanation of the scientific method or the design or interpretation of an experiment.

Short writing assignments are brief writeups of your lab data. Assignments may include a data table, a graph, or may be a paragraph explaining data or may be a typical section from a scientific paper e.g. “Results”. You will receive individual assignment sheets for each short writing assignment.

You will develop a team project toward the end of the semester and as a part of that project will conduct a series of experiments as a group. Each team will be required to write a proposal for the team’s research (25 pts) and to prepare a written and/or oral presentation (75 pts) describing your project. You will receive an assignment sheet with rubric for your these assignments.

XIII. How to Study Science

For advice on how to succeed as a student in a college science course, see How to Study Science, 3rd. ed. By Fred Drewes and Kristen Mulligan, 2000, McGraw-Hill, Boston, ISBN # 0-697-36051-2.

5 Find out what kind of a learner you are by answering Richard Felder’s Index of Learning Styles questionnaire at h ttp://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSpage.html

XIV. Title IX Syllabus Language Indiana University of Pennsylvania and its faculty are committed to assuring a safe and productive educational environment for all students. In order to meet this commitment and to comply with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and guidance from the Office for Civil Rights, the University requires faculty members to report incidents of sexual violence shared by students to the University's Title IX Coordinator. The only exceptions to the faculty member's reporting obligation are when incidents of sexual violence are communicated by a student during a classroom discussion, in a writing assignment for a class, or as part of a University-approved research project. Faculty members are obligated to report sexual violence or any other abuse of a student who was, or is, a child (a person under 18 years of age) when the abuse allegedly occurred to the Department of Human Services (1-800-932-0313) and University Police (724-357-2141). Information regarding the reporting of sexual violence and the resources that are available to victims of sexual violence is set forth at: http://www.iup.edu/socialequity/policies/title-ix/

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