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Green Sheet: CEPC 05/06-12

At the May 4, 2006 Faculty Meeting, CEPC will move the adoption of the following new courses.

Biology 122: Life: Meaning and Mystery, Science and Stewardship

Catalog Description:

This course offers non-majors a chance to explore biology within the laboratory and in the field. It offers a thoughtful, reflective experience in which students examine the process of science as a way of relating to mystery and phenomena of nature such as fertilization, embryogenesis, evolution, and ecology against the backdrop of modern culture. Rationale The course offers a unique opportunity for non-majors to explore biology in an investigative, hands-on fashion and in a smaller than usual setting. (The course cap will be 24.) It also takes advantage of unique resources, since it effectively piggy-backs on our upper-level Developmental Biology course. This allows students to observe living sea-urchin embryos (students watch fertilization occur) and to study chick embryos (they perform surgical procedures on living embryos). Finally, the rolling discussion nature of the course encourages a more thoughtful processing of the material than is usually allowed in a typical, content-driven biology course where a lot of material must be covered quickly. There are no staffing implications; this course takes the place of a CIS course that has now lapsed.

Biology 387: Neuroethology

Catalog Description:

Neuroethology is the study of how nervous systems generate natural animal behavior. The nervous system connects an animal to its environment, determining how an animal perceives, learns about, and reacts to stimuli. This course explores the neural mechanisms underlying diverse behaviors, such as escape reflexes, locomotion, and communication, in a wide range of invertebrate and vertebrate species. Prerequisites: Math 120 and any of the following: Biology 233, 247, 266, Neuroscience 234, or Psychology 238.

Rationale:

This course offers an interesting and challenging opportunity for biology majors to explore the cellular mechanisms of behavior in a curriculum that emphasizes hands-on experimentation and scientific communication skills. It fulfills the 300-level course requirement for biology majors, an ORC requirement for General Education, and the advanced science elective requirement for the interdisciplinary neuroscience concentration. Furthermore, it will be offered years that Animal Behavior is not offered, and this alteration increases the opportunity for biology majors to take ethology-based courses.

This course will be offered in alternate years with Biology 385: The Neuron. These courses represent only two among several potential capstone courses that neuroscience concentrators may choose from.

Religion 285: What is Religion? Approaches and Methods

Catalog Description:

A study of competing and complementary approaches to the study of religion prevalent in the contemporary academy, this course prepares sophomore and junior religion majors for more advanced research seminars. Paying attention to the emphases and presuppositions of each approach, students develop an improved ability to understand the way that these different approaches affect scholarship and contribute to agreements and disagreements about what religion is and should be. Prerequisites: BTS-B, BTS-T.

Rationale:

This course prepares sophomore and junior religion majors for more advanced research seminars in the religion department in two ways. First, it acquaints students with important issues and approaches for the study of religion, and affords them the opportunity to reflect explicitly on the different methods that they encounter and practice in courses taken throughout the major. These approaches include, but are not limited to: 1) theological approaches, 2) historical approaches, 3) social-scientific approaches, 4) literary approaches, and 5) critical approaches. Second, it will develop and cultivate critical reading, argumentative, and research skills that students will need to perform more advanced seminar work

The course will have a minimal impact on departmental staffing and will not eliminate courses or cause other courses to be taught less often.