WELCOME TO THE SENIOR SEMINAR WEBPAGE BSC 4931

Spring term , 2010

Instructor: Dr. Walter Goldberg

Office OE 229

Office Hours MW 11:30-12:30 by prior appointment

email: goldberg@fiu.edu

There are TWO sections listed here: MONDAY 2:00-3:15 listed as "section A" and WEDNESDAY 2:00-3:15, listed as "section B", both in Charles Perry (PC) 419. Make sure you are looking at your section's timetable below. The schedule is duplicated to distinguish Monday and Wednesday sections.

Course Objectives: There are 3 goals for this course:

1) familiarize students with searching techniques and reading the primary scientific literature

2) enhance public speaking skills

3) enhance writing skills

Course Requirements:

1) You will present a talk to the class based on an aproved topic (20-30 minutes with one or more minutes for questions).

2) You will compose a research paper on your research (~8 pages double spaced- details below).

Note that you will be scored on both of these requirements (details below).

3) You will take an exit exam in biology to see what you have learned while a student at FIU. The test is administered bythe Educational Testing Service (the same folks who produce the SAT). Details are given below.

CLASS SCHEDULE: All meetings are mandatory

GRADING

Your grade will be based on timely topic approval, meeting with your instructor as scheduled above, and turning in your paper as scheduled. Timeliness counts for 20% of your grade. Your presentation is worth 30 points, your written assignment 40 points, and your score on the standardized test 10 points. Grades will be assigned on a 100 point scale in which 90-100 = A, 80-89= B, 70-79= C, 60-69= D, <60= F.

The following notes are IMPORTANT. Please read all of it.

A. TOPIC APPROVALS: Choosing your topic: Your topic will be one of biological significance (e.g., a type of molecular genetics, melting of the Arctic, discovery of a new species, etc.). NO MEDICAL STUFF PLEASE! This is a biology course. You must email me with proposed topics based on an article from the popular press , e.g., A CURRENT NEWSPAPER OR NEWS MAGAZINE like Newsweek or Time . You can also check the New York Times, which (unlike the Herald) has a special science section every Tuesday. You must email me with a copy of the news article that your topic will be based on, as well as a brief description of what you intend to research (a sentence or two will suffice). EXAMPLE: Lebovich J, Caputo M and Benn ES.Miami Herald Friday Aug 22, 2008: Wet, windy week, Tropical Storm Fay. The article describes how walking catfish were crossing the streets in St. Lucie County due to the presence of high water. I will research walking catfish and their effects on fresh water ecosytems in Florida as an exotic species.

Your topic cannot be so narrow that you will not be able to find scientific literature on it (e.g., sleep patterns in 3-toed sloths) or so general that the literature will be overwhelming (e.g., global warming). In addition, your topic should be BIOLOGICAL. Public health, robotics and anthropology are all interesting, but they are not biology.

I will give you feedback on modifying it, talking you out of it, or approving it, BUT your deadline for an APPROVED topic with a confirming email from me must be received before FEBRUARY 1st or 5th (depending on your section day) at 5 pm. This means that you have to begin the process of topic selection well before that. The earlier the better. YOU MUST CHECK YOUR UNIVERSITY EMAIL (no Yahoos, gmail, AOL or other accounts will work for me- I only have a record of your FIU emails). If I do not hear from you in a timely fashion I will ask you to drop the course because this is only "first base" in the senior seminar game. In order to be prepared for that date, you must email me from your FIU email account and I will confirm by return mail. You must check your FIU email account. If you have not recieved a confirmation it is up to you to contact me prior to the deadline. Earlier is better. This part of your work (and completing it on time) accounts for 5% of your total grade.

Once your topic is approved, you should begin searching for 10 relevant journal articles. I will meet with you starting in early February (see schedule above). For that meeting you will give me a copy of the original cover pages* of each of the 10 articles you have chosen to back up your oral and written presentations and a typed list of references in alphabetical order by the first author. Remember, Journal Articles ONLY! No internet or blog articles, please.Your topic must have primary literature to back it up, so your topic cannot be so new that little has been published in the PRIMARY LITERATURE: journal articles like Proceedings of the Ntional Academy of Sciences, Marine Biology, Ecology, Nature, etc. All of these are on the 3rd floor of the library and you will learn about this (and how to search) on the second meeting of the class. For most topics, literature must be roughly 5 years old or less (I will accept articles up to 10 years old, but prefer 5). No internet or textbook references will be accepted, athough I have no objection to your use of them to find background literature, to write the introduction of your papers, or to fill in general information. I will of course, object to use of internet material (e.g., Wikipedia, or anything else for that matter) and of course, presenting it as your own. See note on PLAGIARISM below.

** The original cover page should have the title, authors , abstract and the first part of the text. If you do not have the complete full page (i.e., you only have the abstract), it means that you did not access the entire article. YOU MUST SHOW THAT YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN ORDER FOR IT TO COUNT AS ONE OF YOUR REFERENCES!!!

* A note on email due dates: Please do not try to send me corrupted files in order to gain time. You must "CC" yourself on all e-mail submissions to make certain it opens properly. If I cannot open your file it has not been submitted!

A note on ATTENDENCE

Attendence is required at each class meeting, especially on presentation days (see below). There will be days when I will be meeting with students individually and on those days only part of the class will be required to attend. Failure to attend required class meetings or appointments with me will result in a loss of points on your total grade (see above for how many). You must check your university email account for messages from me regarding any changes in plan. Also please check the syllabus for updates before each class.

B. PRESENTATIONS: Your presentations have been scheduled as shown above. If you need to change your date you must (exigent circumstances excepted) find a volunteer to take your place!!!!!!

You can present using Power Point or transparencies and an overhead projector. Your instructor will give you presentation hints on

the 2nd class meeting .

Your talks will be timed. I prefer the latter to leave a few minutes for questions. However, under no circumstances can you run short or long. This will cost you points. Seriously. PRACTICE YOUR TALK and get the timing right. Allow for nervousness. Students tend to talk more quickly than they do when alone. If your talk requires more than 25 minutes during practice, you should find something to cut out. Likewise, add material to make it to the 20-minute mark.

Start by summarizing the newspaper article and include the reference to it. For example, to cite the walking catfish article in your talk, you can simply refer to Lebovich et al., 2008. [Note that "et al." is Latin for the abbreviation "and others"- et alia. You don't have to include all the authors except at the end of the written presentation, and even then, only the first three authors before using "et al."]

Then discuss your research on the articles. You can include graphs and charts you found to make your main points. Be sure to cite the source of your graphs (e.g., Block et al., 2006) at the bottom. Finish with the significance of what you have found and possible future directions for research in that area. Your last page or slide should show your list of 10 references.

Be enthusiastic (not monotone) and try to make it interesting, but keep the showmanship to a minimum. Try not to read what you are presenting. Summarize or paraphrase. PRACTICE!!! Pretend this presentation is part of a job interview.

PEER REVIEW

All talks will be graded by the other students in the class according to the criteria linked below. No, you don't get to evaluate yourself. Evaluations are anonymous, but will be given to the presenters by email tallied by the instructor. All students are expected to be in class for this and all other parts of the course. Note in the criteria that perfection is not expected. Don't give a perfect score if the presentation was mumbled, graphs were too small to see, and was presented to the blackboard instead of the audience! Circle the appropriate score for each category in the presentation and hand each of them in to me at the end of class. This is part of class participation.

Scoring Criteria-oral presentations

C. WRITTEN REPORT

You do not have to meet with me in order to prepare a written report. However, you must email me a copy as scheduled above to give me the opportunity of editing your paper. Late reports are assessed at 3 points per day.

HOW DO I PREPARE MY RESEARCH PAPER?

Requirements for preparation: One inch margins, double spaced, 12 point New Times Roman font for the body (section titles listed below can be larger). Papers should be 5-6 pages long, not including the title and literature sited sections. Please paginate your papers!

Five Hints on how to write and how not to write:

A) You should cite ALL TEN of the articles you read. Here is the tricky part: You may find that some of the articles you picked are not relevant to the focus of your paper. Solution: go back to the library and find recent and relevant papers.

B) When you write, please DO NOT cite improperly, DO NOT be verbose and DO NOT use quotes. Here is what NOT to do:

In the paper written by DR Stoddart, JB Hutchinson and MR Marks in the Journal of Irreproduceable Results titled......(2007), a discovery was made that that there was a relationship between the size of islands on reefs and their vegetation. According to the authors "Vegetated and sand cays differ from unvegetated cays in size, morphology, stability, and other characterisitics. Smaller islands may be colonized by herbs, grasses, vines and low shrubs. Large cays may support a tall broadleaf woodland".

1) The citation should be Stoddard et al. (2007). That is all. No initials, or first names or other authors should appear in the text (unlees there are only two). The journal does not appear in the text, nor does the title of the article, although all of these things should appear in the literature cited page at the end of the paper.

Note how to use quotes in the text:

Smith and Whitehead (2006) found that whale feces is a good indicator of the consumption of squids by sperm whales. OR

Some authors have found that squid is the preferred food of sperm whales in the Galapagos (Smith and Whitehead, 2006), but others disagree (Washington and Jefferson, 2005; Federer and Nadal, 2008).

If you are citing a paper in the text that has more than two authors, use the following notation: Goldberg et al., 2009. Note that "al." is an abbreviation for alia (Latin: "others") and must have a period after it.

2) Verbosity: "In the paper written by"..... "a discovery was made that there was" are all unnecessary words. Here is how you say it: Stoddart et al. (2007) found that..... and that is all!!! Just get to the meat of what you want to say. Scientific writing is highly abbreviated. Longer is definitely NOT better.

3) Quotes: Use your own words and try to find more than one paper to support what you have written. Refer to the quotes above and instead say something like: "Small islands are often vegetated according to size and stability. Stoddard et al. (2007) found that sandy cays are typically unvegetaed, whereas more stable rocky ones may develop grasses, herbs and other vegetation. Roberts et al., (2009) reported that some larger cays may support broadleaf woodlands".

4) Paragraph structure: Your first sentence in each paragraph should define its topic. If you write about things that are not related to the introductory sentence, YOU HAVE DRIFTED OFF TOPIC. Take the offending sentence out and stay with what you began to discuss or describe. That sentence you took out may deserve its own paragraph somewhere else. In any case, there should be some logical flow among paragraphs.

5) Write an outline that structures your paper, preferably paragraph by paragraph, but if not, at least by topic. Lack of organization will be evident if you do not use an outline! Please read the paper over before you send it to me. No spelling errors (use spellcheck!). Good grammar is expected. Please avoid being repetitious. For example: Green leaves are essential organs for plant photosynthesis and respiration. Green leaves are also important for .... (hint: use "They"). If you are describing the use of a drug, please do not repeat the drug name 5 times in as many sentences. Be creative.

There are five sections of the paper: In a group of three the paper should be 3-4 pages long PER PERSON (9-12 pages long total, not including the literature cited and graphics. I must know who has written which sections.

1) Page one: Title and Abstract. The abstract shoud be a summary of your paper, the science behind it (a brief summary of what your research shows) and some brief conclusions. It should answer the question "Why should I be interested in reading this paper?". The total length is 150-250 words. The best way to figure out what to say in an abstract is to read the abstracts of the papers you cite. There are typically no citations in the abstract. This section has to be written by the group.

2) Introduction. This is page 2 of your written report. It can begin with a reference to your newspaper article (that is up to you). You should introduce your research material using older literature (jut like the more recent papers you are reading). Do not introduce the reader to general biology terminology. Instead, try to introduce the subject matter (and terminology) of your research subject. This section is roughly 3 pages long. USE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE THAT IS NOT RECENT TO INTRODUCE THE RECENT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. This section can be written by one person.

3) Scientific research. This is the main body of your paper. It should summarize the scientifc studies you found, and have a logical flow between paragraphs. This section should be 6 or more pages long and should focus on recent developments in the field you have chosen.

4) Significance. This section should summarize the importance of the reaearch you investigated and what else needs to be done in the future. This section should be 0.5-1 page long and should be written by the group.

5) Literature Cited. This is your last page and is not counted in your 9-12 page total. It should be a complete alphabetical list (by first author's last name) of all 10 references (plus the older ones you used in the introduction). By complete I mean authors, title, date, journal, volume and page numbers. There are many styles for citation of articles in science journals, but we will adopt the following as standard:

Smith SC and Whitehead H. 2006. The diet of the Galapagos sperm whales Physeter macrocephalus as indicated by fecal sample analysis. Marine Mammal Science 16: 315-325.

Note: No first names, only initials, and they follow the last name, which is always listed first. Citations are in Alphabetical order by last name of the first author.

If there are more than three authors, you can cite as follows: Smith SC, Whitehead H, Asbury JB and six others. 2008. Sperm whale attack on SCUBA divers. Bulletin of Marine Science 42: 123-126. Note that 42 is the volume number, followed by a colon and the pages.

Note that there are no issue numbers or specific dates (other than the year) that are listed. The exception should be your newspaper or popular press article, which should give a more specific date because these are published weekly or daily. Species names are in italics with genus captalized (species names are not).

You do not have to submit a final (2nd) draft unless you want to improve your grade. However, if you choose to submit one, it is due within TEN DAYS after I send the initial draft back to you. Late papers will not be accepted.

I will use the link below to judge the quality of your written work.

Scoring Criteria- written presentations

A WORD ABOUT PLAGIARISM

If I have any reason to believe that any portion of your writing assignment has been copied from another source, you will recieve a grade of F in the course. Plagiarizing includes copying portions of another paper or website. You must cite the source of any information that is not your own as shown above. I will be using Turnitin.com to check papers for plagiarism so don't even think about it.

* YOUR FINAL SUBMISSION (revision) is OPTIONAL. When you get my edited version of your draft paper back from me, you have two weeks to re-sumbit it for re-grading. Please note that due to our schedule, the last group of drafts due in April may not have much time! Thus, you are encouraged to submit your paper as early as possible so that you can send a final draft back to me with enough time to read it before grades are due.

D. The EXIT Exam: THE EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE MAJOR FIELD TEST IN BIOLOGY

Cell Biology (biochemistry and cellular energetics): ~20%

Molecular Biology and Genetics (molecular genetics, heredity): ~21%

Organismal Biology (plant and animal diversity, fossil record, life histories, organ systems of vertebrates and invertebrates, animal physiology, plant physiology, plant organ systems and reproduction and growth): ~31%

Population Biology (including population/ecosystem ecology, genetics and patterns of evolution): ~28%

Analytical Skills (quantitation, hypotheses and theory, experimental design including statistics, interpretation of tables and graphs): 10-12%

The test date and place will be announced when the information becomes available.

ETS SCORE CONVERSION (Range = 120-200; median = 155) based on June 2009 score database

Points out of 10 are allocated as follows:

>168 (top 15%) = 10

160-168 = 8-9 (60-80+ percentile)

151-159 (median range) = 6-7

141-150 = 4-5 (10-40th percentile)

140 or less (lower 10%) = 3

Here is how I will calculate your grades. Your presentation is 30%. Your paper is 40%. You can convert letter grades I may give on your papers as follows F= less than 60, D= 60-65 depending on howbad they are, C= 75, C+= 78, B- = 80, B= 85, B+ = 88, A- = 90 and A= 95, although outstanding papers can get a 99. This same schedule will be used to determine your final grade. You are now up to 70%. There is an additional 20% for timely topic approval, showing up to meet with me, turning your paper in on time and class participation. If you have not heard from me by email regarding deductions, you get the entire 20 points. The last 10% is calculated by your exit exam grade, with points added as shown above.

Exit Exam Instructions