Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 3 sessions / week, 1 hour / session

Recitations: 2 sessions / week, 1 hour / session

Prerequisites

There are no formal prerequisites for this course, but we do presuppose high school-level biology and chemistry (especially familiarity with the fundamental aspects of chemical structure).

Before taking this course, you may want to review Pre-7.01 Getting up to Speed in Biology, a self-paced course designed to help prepare students for their first college-level biology class.

Text

Freeman, Scott. Biological Science. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. ISBN: 9780130819239.

Recitations

Regular weekly attendance is expected. Each recitation section meets twice per week for 50 minutes.

Tutors

Tutors are available at no charge for all students who wish to have extra help with the course material, either on a one-time or on a regular basis.

Unit and Lecture Questions

At the start of each unit of the course we will post Unit questions on the website. We will also post lecture questions before each lecture. You are encouraged to consider how the material presented throughout the unit relates to the unit questions, and how the material presented in a given lecture relates to the daily questions. We will post our answers to these questions as soon as it is appropriate.

Assignments

There are seven problem sets for this course. The lowest problem set grade is dropped in calculating your final grade (see below). Although you may engage in general discussions of problems, sharing of answers is a violation of the trust placed in all students in the class, each of whom is entrusted with producing her/his own set of answers. Students who copy problem set answers or allow their problem sets to be copied may receive a 0 for all the Problem Sets (and thus lose 20% of the grade).

Completed problem sets must be put in the appropriate TA's box in the wooden cart by the due date/time.

Note: Problem sets will not be accepted late and will be scored zero points if not turned in on time.

Exams

Three quizzes and a final exam are given in this course. The quizzes are given during the term and a comprehensive final (worth 2 quizzes), given during finals week.

The lowest letter grade score of the five (the 3 quizzes plus the final worth 2 quizzes) will be dropped when calculating your overall grade. Because we drop the lowest score, there will be no make-up quizzes and no conflict quizzes given for any reason. If you miss a term quiz, it will be the score that is dropped.

The Final Exam is a 3-hour, cumulative exam, covering the entirety of the course. The score on the final exam will be halved and each half counts as a quiz score when calculating your grade. The final represents two of the five quiz scores and must be taken, otherwise you lose 20% of your grade. If your score on the final is your lowest grade then one of the halves will be dropped.

The date, time, and location of the final will be announced as soon as this information is available. A conflict final exam may be scheduled by the registrar for students with legitimate exam conflicts.

Quiz Review Sessions will be held prior to each quiz -- the dates, locations and times of the reviews will be announced during the term.

Any quizzes, exams, or problem sets that are not picked up by the end of the term will be disposed of.

Grades