Course Descriptions
Biology
IB 531 - Emerging Infectious Diseases
In this course students will examine infectious diseases, such as Asian flu, West Nile virus, HIV, cholera, and Lyme disease, that are a major threat to human health. Historic links between human health, disease pathogens and ecology will be explored, as well as the origin of each disease and how it is regulated by specific environmental conditions. Students will also explore how global change and biodiversity-loss will increase the possibility of future epidemics and the steps needed to reduce their effects on human health.
IB 532 - Sustainability and Global Change
This course will examine how on-going global change affects sustainability. The course explores the effects of climate change, global warming, alternative biofuels, future food security, and conservation of biodiversity on human society. Students will explore how humans can make better use of the Earth’s natural resources with little to no damage to the ecosystem, while taking into account ever mounting demands for energy resources.
IB 533 - Human Genome and Bioinformatics
This course will highlights the advances in understanding the human genome, utilizing the latest techniques in bioinformatics, i.e. acquiring, analyzing, storing, and displaying the information form the entire genome and protein sequences. The course will also explore the latest laboratory techniques, as well as the use of extensive online databases and software. Students explore the significance of sequencing the human genome, applying bioinformatics to the genome, and realizing the potential to understand human health, disease, and the place of humans in the larger ecosystem.
IB 534 - Evolution and Medicine
Course explores how human health is inseparably tied to our evolutionary history. Principles that apply to human health include evolutionary processes, e.g. natural selection, as well as molecular evolution, human evolution, and evolutionary-developmental biology. Students will examine how these principles can be applied to understand human nutrition and metabolism, reproduction, disease and stress, and behavior. These principles assist physicians, researchers, and the general public in understanding how natural selection has acted on humans over time and left us vulnerable to disease and injury.
IB 535 - Biology and Tech Innovation
Course explores how experts in biology and technological fields use bio-inspiration to create technological innovations to solve human problems (for example Velcro). Students use and expand upon their current biological knowledge to explore new ways ot create biologically-based sustainable innovations. Topics that will be explored include nest building as inspiration for energy-efficient architecture, plant chemistry as inspiration for green manufacturing, animal locomotion and sensing as inspiration for robots, and the advances in understanding of biological nanostructures and nanoprocesses as inspiration for nanotechnology.
Education
CI 541 - Learning in Science (4 hrs)
This course focuses on influential theories of student learning, such as behaviorism, the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, and constructivism, and their implications for science education. The course examines the theoretical underpinnings of these learning theories as well as their implications for instruction, assessment, and teacher education.
CI 544 - Inquiry and Science Education Reforms
This course examines the history of science education reform efforts since the 1950s from the lens of inquiry teaching and learning. The course examines developments in our understandings of inquiry as a pedagogical approach and set of instructional outcomes in middle and high school science education, as well as implications for instruction in pre-college science classrooms.
CI 548 - Capstone Project I & II
Part I of the course focuses on the design of an action research project (capstone project), which integrates pedagogical and science content ideas addressed in the program courses. The project amounts to an empirical investigation of a student-generated research question around issues focused on science teaching and learning. Students are expected to collect data for their project, preferably in their own classrooms, in the period between Parts I and II of the course. Part II focuses the analysis, interpretation, and discussion of the data collected, and the implications of the findings for classroom practice. The course maybe repeated in separate terms to a maximum of 4 hours.