Animals of the Chesapeake Bay

The intent is to provide animal biology content and process which will help pre-service teachers be prepared to teach biology in upper elementary grades and in middle school grades.
Emphasis is on understanding of models that describe animal-based natural phenomena at the cellular, organism, population and community levels. The course will draw from the subject matter of the prerequisite courses and upon this foundation will build a more detailed knowledge of the underlying theories. These will be at the cellular, organism, population and community levels in order to show what kinds of relationships exist among/within living systems. Animals of the Chesapeake Bay will be used as a vehicle because of regional importance and interest.
 

Contemporary Biology, GBIO 103, is a course designed for non-biology majors. The intent is to use current topics of interest today to describe the methods of inquiry that lead to scientific knowledge and be able to distinguish science from pseudoscience and non-science. It is important that our students, if they are to become well educated women and man, need to know something about the mechanisms of how biological phenomena works. It is difficult for a person to have an enlightened opinion of the so-called “morning after pill” as opposed to the so-called “abortion pill” if they have no concept of the mechanism of how either works.
In this course I explore the biology behind such things as Science as a Way of Knowing.; The Morning-After Pill; Genetics; Genes, Mutations and Cancer; Stem Cells and Cloning; Genetic Engineering; Eugenics; and Evolution.

Science Perspectives – GSCI 104 

My two sections of this course focus both on science methods and the other objectives for a non-traditional lab. I use two different vehicles to approach the same objectives one is the biology of the blue crab and the second is introduced species, especially in the Chesapeake Bay region. The course attempts to answer the question of “How do we know” within the context of science. We briefly examine the history and philosophy of science and the terminology used. We examine sources of information. We use information on WWW in order to collect data. This data is analyzed in a variety of ways and, conclusions drawn. Computers are extensively used. The class meets for one hour each week and there are innumerable out-of-class assignments.