| BIOL 111 | Comparative Vertebrate & Human Anatomy Prerequisites: BIOL 101/103 and BIOL 102 Offered Every Spring Semester During the Vertebrate and Human Comparative Anatomy Course, students will be introduced to vertebrate anatomy. The lecture component will focus on the development and evolution of anatomy, examine the diversity of structures possessed by vertebrates, how these structures are used and function, and how they relate to one another. The laboratory component will give the students a hands-on experience with anatomy. The labs will focus on dissection of the shark and cat, with material from a diversity of vertebrates available for comparison and evolutionary context. The course assumes that students are familiar with general biology, and knowledge of evolution is recommended, although not required. |
| BIOL 119 | Herpetology Prerequisites: BIOL 101/103 and BIOL 102 Occassionally offered during the Fall Semester. Next Planned Offering: Fall 2019 During the herpetology course, students will be introduced to the diversity and biology of amphibians and “reptiles”. The lecture component will have a global and diverse focus, covering topics of phylogenetics, the origin and evolution of amphibians and reptiles, the global diversity of these taxa, and their biogeography, biology, ecology and conservation. In the laboratory component, students will learn to identify amphibians and reptiles, the anatomy of these taxa, and some field techniques that are useful for studying them. The course assumes that students are familiar with basic evolutionary theory and general biology. |
| BIOL 206/306 | Advanced Biostatistics Prerequisites: BIOL 106 - Introductory Biostatistics Offered every other Fall Semester. Will be offered off-cycle next: Spring 2019. It will be offered again in Fall 2020 During the Advanced Biostatistics course, students will build on knowledge gained in Introductory Biostatistics by learning more advanced techniques, learning to read about biostatistics in the primary literature, and analyzing real biological data, often collected in research labs in Clark's Biology Department. Students will cover topics including experimental design, dealing with multiple comparisons, different types of regression, advanced ANOVA designs, ANCOVA, MANOVA, principle component analysis, discriminant function analysis, resampling methods, model selection in a maximum likelihood framework, Bayesian inference, and a range of phylogenetic statistics. Most analyses will be done in R, a free, open source statistical computation software. Prior experience with statistics is mandatory. |
| BIOL 233/333 | Animal Locomotion Prerequisites: BIOL 101/103 Offered every other Spring Semester. Next Planned Offering: Spring 2021 This course is a hands-on research course. How do vertebrate animals move? How is their movement affected by different aspects of their environment? What techniques can we use to study locomotion? These are the questions that students will grapple with as they learn about animal locomotion in an inquiry-based research course that will combine short lectures, demonstrations, reading and discussion of primary literature, and hands-on analysis of locomotion data in the form of high-speed videos. Students will learn about the biophysics of locomotion and motion analysis, and apply this knowledge to a research project, where they will collect data from high-speed videos, learn to formulate and test hypotheses about their data and write a report on their findings. Students will learn about various aspects of research, including scientific ethics, data collection and presentation, critical evaluation of the primary literature, and writing in a scientific manner. |
| BIOL 290/390 | Scientific Careers & Effective Practice Prerequisites: Permission. Students must be sneiors or grad students and reserach-active Offered every other Spring Semester. Next Planned Offering: Spring 2020 Targeted for Senior undergraduate and graduate students, this course will explore how science works and how it can be done with maximum rigor and effectiveness. It will also address ethical considerations in doing science, how to disseminate research findings (including at conferences and by writing), how to secure funding for research (including grant writing), and how to successfully apply for academic and non-academic science jobs. Although short lectures will be given on some topics, the course will be highly focused on discussion. Students will also write a curriculum vitae or resume, write a grant proposal, do a literautre search, and give an oral presentation. |