Lectures

Laboratory

You are not required to attend the lectures. Let us begin by asking why people attend lectures. Maybe you just need some place to go on weekday mornings. Maybe your friends show up at lectures. Maybe you want to learn some material. The point here is I want to emphasize learning, rather than teaching. Teaching is about a talking head presenting more or less coherent notions on a topic. Teaching may or may not facilitate learning. I want to emphasize learning. Some people learn a great deal from lectures, especially if they already have some background in the area. Those of us who are lucky enough to learn from lectures ought to plan on attending them. Maybe you'll learn something about insect physiology. However, I recognize and respect many other learning styles. Some people do not learn well from talking heads. Rather than sit through a more or less boring lecture, from which one may gain virtually nothing, feel free to invest your time more wisely. For example, you could spend the time in detailed private study of the lecture materials.

So, attending the lectures is an option, left up to your own mature thinking. You are still expected to learn the material, and you must sit the examinations at the scheduled periods.

Laboratory

By comparison, learning laboratory skills requires some active participation. In contrast to the lectures, you are required to participate in the laboratory activities. We typically divide the class into two groups, one for the Tuesday laboratory and one for the Thursday laboratory. You are welcome to express your choices, however, two criteria apply. First, the two laboratory groups must be balanced. Second, you may not switch back and forth between the periods. Once assigned a laboratory period, we will ask you to remain in that group.

Sometimes the laboratory will meet as a single group on Tuesday or Thursday. This helps present some material that is best offered to everybody at the same time.

This course is designed to emphasize individual strengths. Some people do very well on ordinary written examinations. Some folks do better on term papers and other expressions that allow time for deeper thought. Still others do well in different ways. We can accommodate these differences in learning and expression by constructing the course from a variety of experiences.

There are 6 major elements of this course:

Final grades are based on percentages of total points:

I ask each of you to conduct a review of a discrete area of insect physiology. Your review of this literature will form the basis of a 12- to 15-page paper. The length is inclusive with all references, figures and tables. The paper should be double-spaced, typed (12 pt), spell-checked, grammar-checked, edited and polished into a very satisfactory academic document. The review should summarize the literature you studied, then express a coherent point of view on the topic. I do not expect you to discover entirely new insights into physiology. Rather, the paper should reflect your learning on the topic. One the other hand, I want you to experience the feeling of being asked to write a review of the literature for publication in a leading journal, such as Journal of Insect Physiology. I hope to see you learn that a coherent, understandable review is quite useful even when it does not offer new theory.

Your review paper is due at the beginning of lecture on Tuesday, 25 November, 1997. This is just before the Thanksgiving Holiday. A term paper should not interfere with a healthy and well-earned holiday break. This element of the course earns up to 100 points, about 13% of your overall grade. If you had top grades in every other element, you could just skip this and still get a good, solid B.

We recognize some students are enrolled in Entomology 401, the undergraduate level of insect physiology. While we want you to have the experience of writing, your literature reviews are graded on a separate scale.

I want you to write a brief essay (about 400 to 500 words) on your learnings, insights, connections, and difficulties each week. The essays will give me an idea of how you are doing in class, and they give me a sense of your feelings about the course. The essays also provide opportunity to practice and improve your writing skills. I hold these essays in confidence, and I want you to feel completely free to express anything you feel is germane to our course. The essays earn a total of 150 points, about 19% of your grade. Again, we are sensitive to individuals enrolled in the 401 level of insect physiology. While it remains important for undergraduates to have the experience of writing, there are different levels of expectation for graduate and undergraduate students.

This is a high-level course, reserved for individuals who have achieved the professional phases of education. We expect highly professional behaviors in this class.

• If you can not get to the lecture on time, please skip the lecture. Late arrivals can upset the learning environment of your colleagues, and distract lecturers. In the same train of thought, we expect participation in class with questions and comments will be held to a professional level.

• Laboratory safety is a professional issue. Obtain a laboratory coat and wear it in each laboratory section. Wear glasses or safety glasses in each laboratory section. Wear shoes in each laboratory section.

• Present your written materials in a professional style. Professionals do not pretend first drafts are polished products. We expect you to draft your writing well before due dates, then polish the draft into a very high quality.

• You should turn your assignments in on time. Professionals invest some planning so all materials, including your reviews, can be written and polished before the last minute.

• Successful organizations invest lots of time in planning; we should all do that. Do you plan to attend the National Meeting of the ESA? If so, plan for it. Are you planning on other meetings? If so, plan for it.

The laboratory program is designed to give you a feeling for conducting experiments in insect biochemistry and physiology. We have two main goals. One is to give you a sense of how we gain greater understanding of insect physiology. In point of fact, you will conduct some of the experiments we used to make substantial advances in insect physiology. We also want to give you a survey of some of the equipment and analytical skills available. You may want to incorporate some of these skills into your own graduate research programs.

The laboratory program can earn up to 150 points, about 19% of your overall grade in the course. Your grades in laboratory come from evaluating participation and professional behavior, and from maintaining a high caliber laboratory notebook. Laboratory notebooks are recognized as legal documents that very often become the only proof of when an idea first entered your mind, when an experiment was conducted, and exactly what data were collected. A professional notebook can be your only protection against lawsuits, claims of priority, and accusations of misconduct. Hence, in this class we emphasize laboratory notebooks as one way to help you prepare for future professional careers – in any research situation.

Your laboratory notebooks should be bound books with numbered pages. You should always use ink to make notations in the books; never use pencils. We all make mistakes when writing, and in your laboratory notebook the correct action is to simply draw a line through the error and write the correct information next to it. I suggest you reserve the first 10 pages for a "Table of Contents".

Seems to me that the best way to keep students from visiting you is to set formal office hours. My policy is to invite you to drop by my office any time you want. During the teaching semester, you are my first priority, and I will nearly always set aside whatever I happen to be doing and visit with you.