Appropriate for First Year students.

TimeDaysLocationInstructorGERCreditOPUS Class NumberSyllabus (Tentative)
12:50pm-1:40pm
MWF
1462 Clifton Rd 308
Bruce Levin. SNT. 412652 TBA.

January 13, 2010- April 26, 2010

Prerequisites: Students should be in their second year of college or beyond and have an interest in and an open mind for discussing potentially controversial scientific issues of direct relevance to the health and well being of humans and our environment.

Semester Details:

NOTE:  This course does NOT count toward the Biology major.

This course is intended to provide undergraduate students that are not Biology majors (as well as interested majors) with those elements of the biomedical sciences, ecology, evolutionary biology, and applied statistics that are of direct importance to their lives as individuals and as citizens.  Its primary goal is to provide the background tools, and approaches to the critical thinking necessary to objectively evaluate what one reads and hears about biology, medicine, and the environment and to make informed decisions for themselves and society.  Other goals of the course are to improve communication skills and the ability to use computers for research, writing, understanding, evaluating numerical data, and for presentation (WWW, Word, EndNote, Excel, and PowerPoint, to be more specific).

This course is designed to be amenable (and fully understandable) to students with little or no background in (or facility with) biology or mathematics.  There will be two lectures and one discussion period per week, with occasional and optional tutoring and problem solving sessions. Break-out sessions will be held on Wednesdays.  For more information about this course, contact Dr. Bruce Levin at blevin@emory.edu.  This course is open to students in their second semester of college or beyond.

Required Textbooks, Articles, and Resources

  1. Selected readings.

The schedule of courses on O.P.U.S. is the official listing of courses, including days and times they meet and the General Education Requirements they satisfy. Students should use course descriptions as general guidelines. Course requirements, grading details, book lists, and syllabi are subject to change.