Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Selected topics in areas not currently offered within the undergraduate course offerings in the Department of Biological Sciences.

COURSE DETAILS:

Prerequisites: ANY TWO of the following courses: BISC 101, BISC 102, BPK 142, CHEM 121, CHEM 126, PHYS 130, PHYS 131, PHYS 140, and PHYS 141. Preference will be given to students who have completed fewer than 60 credit hours toward their degree program.

How to register: Email Kevin ( klamf@sfu.ca ) with a completed application form* and your advising transcript by Tuesday, February 6th, 2017. Chosen students will be enrolled (or waitlisted) for the course before the start of course registration for the Summer 2017 semester (so as not to interfere with your registration for other courses).

*BISC 272 Application Form ( Fillable PDF / Word )

View Testimonials from Past Students

LAB Sections:
Section D101 (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30-11:20am) OR         
Section D102 (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30-2:20pm)

Course CANVAS

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Course Description: This course will give students opportunities to live through every aspect of being a working scientific researcher. By the end of the semester, you and your student teams will have:

1. Conducted preliminary experiments and chosen your own original research question. 
2. Written and defended a research proposal. 
3. Designed and conducted a series of original experiments to examine possible answers to your research question, and recorded detailed observations in a lab notebook. 
4. Conducted statistical analyses of your results, and used the outcomes to refine subsequent experiments. 
5. Participated in “lab meetings” to give and receive feedback on each team’s methods, results, and conclusions. 
6. Written and peer-reviewed a scientific article. (These articles can then be submitted for publication in the peer-reviewed SFU SURJ). 
7. Presented your results to faculty members and graduate students during a mini-conference at the end of the semester. 

Unlike most other courses, you will not be given a recipe of steps that lead to a pre-planned conclusion. Instead, you will be given the skills and tools to discover your own questions, methods and solutions: this is what a scientist doing meaningful research must do every week, and it is a big part of what makes research so creative and exciting.

To prepare you for this type of research and learning (and to expose you to the tools and questions of different areas of Biology) your team will spend the first 4 weeks of the semester exploring your own solutions to 2-3 different “Real-World Problem” (e.g. seeking new sources of antibiotics and researching new ways to monitor insect populations, etc.). During this time, you will learn to think, read, experiment, analyze, collaborate, and write like a scientist. For the remaining weeks of the semester, you will use the living systems and tools from the first 4 weeks of the semester to carry out the 7 steps listed above.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

A lab coat and lab safety glasses/goggles are required. You will also need a hardcover lined notebook with permanent, non-spiral binding (as shown by your instructor on the first day of classes) to use as your lab notebook.

REQUIRED READING: