(2/4)

(2/7)

(2/14)

(2/21)

(2/28)

(3/7)

(3/14)

(3/21)

(3/28)

(4/4)

(4/11)

(4/18)

(4/25)

(5/2)

(5/12)

Final Examination (Friday, 3:00 6:00

Date in parentheses is the date on Tuesday of the week.

Items in bold are examinations or due dates for papers.

All readings are chapters and pages in Pough et al. (1989). Sections indicated, including boxes, should be read by the date indicated

CHORDATE ZOOLOGY

(BIO344), SPRING 1995 CHORDATE ZOOLOGY (BIO344), SPRING 1995 This document contains important information that you must read and retain for future reference. It describes your rights and obligations in this course. Chordate Zoology is a general introduction to the biology of the chordates. Lectures deal with their interrelationships, morphology, life history, behavior, ecology, evolution, and paleontology. The laboratory is designed to provide knowledge of the chordate body plan, experience in dissection, familiarity with terminology, and limited exposure to chordate diversity.

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Required reading will be assigned from two books, which may be purchased at Stony Books, near the train station on 25A:

Lecture: F.H. Pough, J. B. Heiser, and W. N. McFarland. 1989.Vertebrate Life, 3rd ed. Macmillan Publ. Co., New York, xv + 904 p.

Laboratory: Walker, W. F., Jr. Vertebrate Dissection, 7th ed. Saunders College Publ., Philadelphia, xii + 391 p.

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MIKE BELL'S OFFICE HOURS

. Feel free to drop into my office unannounced during my office hours. If these hours are impossible for you, you can talk to me after class, make an appointment after class or by phone (632-8574), or just call when you want to visit. You may also drop in unannounced outside of my office hours, but I might not be there or I might be unable to see you. I enjoy talking to students, and you are entitled to the individual attention of faculty members during their office hours.

Time Tuesday & Wednesday 11:00-12:30

Place Life Sciences Laboratories, room 023 (basement) I will also be happy to spend time after most lectures to discuss the course with students. Feel free to ask questions after the lectures end.

A SPECIAL NOTE ON THE LABORATORY

. The lab involves dissection, lab demonstrations, and examination of preserved specimens. It meets once per week for three hours. You will work mostly in pairs on dissections and should alternate in dissection and reading instructions while your partner takes a turn dissecting. You must read appropriate sections of the lab manual before the lab meeting. You will probably need to work extra time in lab during TA office hours to complete some dissections and to prepare for quizzes. The lab will be kept open extra hours (to be announced) for these purposes. If you feel that you cannot spend this time in lab, you should drop the course. Also, select a lab partner with a schedule that is compatible with yours so that you can meet to finish incomplete exercises or to study together. Labs will begin to meet the week of January 28. Roll will be taken twice: once in lecture or in the first lab meeting and a second time in lab. Registered students who fail to attend on these dates will be assume

LECTURE READING

Reading assigned for a lecture (see lecture schedule) should be done by the beginning of the week for which it is listed. Adherence to the reading schedule will help give you the vocabulary and background to comprehend the lectures, and it will keep you from falling behind in your reading.

EXAMINATIONS AND GRADING

. Grades will be based on roughly 1060 points. Lecture Grade, 600 points, distributed as follows: Midterm I Tuesday, February 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 points Midterm II Tuesday April 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 points Final Examination Friday, May 12, 3:00-6:00 . . . .300 points The lecture examinations will be based on information presented in all prior lectures (except the immediate preceding one) and reading assigned for the period since the previous examination. Thus, the first midterm, for example, will cover lecture and reading material through Tuesday, February 14. The second midterm and final exam will emphasize lecture and reading material covered since the lecture preceding the previous midterm but will include review questions on lecture material (not reading). There will be relatively few reading questions (1020 % of points), and they will be very general so that a single attentive reading of the text should suffice to answer them. The midterms will be designed to take about an hour, and answers will be written directly on the test sheets. Most questions will require a few words or sentences. Examples of previous examinations will be placed on reserve in the Biology Library. All exams will be graded by the lab TAs, each of whom will grade a sequence of questions on all exam papers. Your test will be returned in about a week. When you receive it, first check the addition of the score. Next check the grading key, which will be posted outside my office and placed on reserve in the Biology Library. If you do not understand your grade on a question, see the grader of that question (not necessarily your lab TA), whose name will appear on the grading key. If you expect to miss an exam, give me advanced notice. If advanced notice is impossible, contact me as soon as possible after the exam. If no valid excuse (preferably written) for absence is provided, a grade of zero will be assigned for the midterm. If a valid excuse is provided, a makeup test may be arranged or a score will be assigned for that midterm based on your performance on remaining lecture exams. You must take the final exam and at least one midterm to receive credit for the course. No one will be permitted to take the final or midterms early. Students who miss the final exam without an excuse will be assigned a grade of F in the course.

Laboratory Grade 300 points

The lab grade is based on quizzes, short literature papers, a short morphology paper, and the TA evaluation:

Lab quizzes (at least 5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 points

TA evaluation score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

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There will be at least five laboratory quizzes, but additional announced or unannounced quizzes may be given if the TA believes students are not preparing for the lab exercises. No lab grades will be dropped in the final computation of course grades. Emphasis will be placed on work completed since the previous quiz, but quizzes may include questions on the reading assigned for that week's work, and there may also be review questions from previous lab exercises. The procedures for lecture exams apply to the quizzes, except that problems should be resolved with the lab TA. The format, content, and scheduling of the lab quizzes will be determined by the lab TA.

Papers 160 points.

There will be three short papers:

(1) a natural history paper on a single chordate species of your choice (60 pt; due Th, 3/9),

(2) an adaptation paper based on papers from the primary (journal) literature (60 pt; due Th, 4/13)

(3) a morphology paper describing a structure from the laboratory (40 pt; due Th, 4/27). The papers will be read by the TAs. More information on the papers will be provided soon. You must select the topics for the papers in advance, as indicated in the schedule on the first page of this syllabus. The common and scientific names of the species for the first paper on the natural history must be given to Mike Bell in lecture, and topics for the other two papers must be approved in writing by the laboratory teaching assistant in advance.

UPPERDIVISION WRITING REQUIREMENT:

The three papers from BIO344 may besubmitted as a set by Biology Majors to meet the "UpperDivision Writing Requirement" for the major (see 1991/93 Undergraduate Bulletin, p. 55). Forms and information are available in the Undergraduate Biology office, Old Chemistry Building, room 140.

COURSE GRADE DISTRIBUTION

The course grade will be computed by adding all lab, paper, and lecture scores listed above. The average grade in this course is usually a middle C (2.4, A = 4.0). However, the grade distribution (including +/) and average grade depend on the point distribution.

DISABILITIES

If you have a physical, psychiatric, emotional, medical or learning disability that may impact on your ability to carry out assigned course work, I would urge that you contact the staff in the Disabled Student Services office (DSS), Humanities Building room 133 (6326748/TDD. DSS will review your concerns and determine with you what accommodations are necessary and appropriate. All information and documentation of disability are confidential.

ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

Any effort to circumvent the evaluation mechanisms of the course to improve a grade for yourself or another student is academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to unauthorized examination of written materials (e.g., neighbors' papers, notes on your hand) during examinations, plagiarism, misrepresentation of the cause of an absence from lab or during an examination, and theft of laboratory materials. Plagiarism is representation of the published or unpublished work of another person, whether it is the entire work, a paragraph, or even a fragment of a sentence, as your own writing. Plagiarism is theft of the real author's work and provides an unfair advantage to the plagiarist. Similarly, theft of laboratory materials gives the thief an unfair advantage on lab quizzes and imposes a significant, unnecessary cost on the University. You are strongly encouraged to report any form of academic dishonesty, and anonymity will be protected if requested. If While I take a very dim view of cheating, some collaboration is encouraged: (1) preparation for examinations, (2) performance of laboratory exercises, and (3) criticism (not rewriting) of the form (including proofreading) and content of papers. If you prepare for exams with another student, do not sit near her/him during the exam because students who studied together sometimes give strikingly similar incorrect answers, raising the suspicion of cheating. Innocence is easily verified if students with similar incorrect answers sit far apart during the test.

MY LECTURES

I sometimes misspeak, I am sometimes unclear, and sometimes I present information that is simply difficult or too compressed. Do not hesitate to ask for clarification during a lecture. Such questions both insure that unclear points are clarified and provide me with feedback on the clarity of my lectures for students.

TEACHING ASSISTANT PERFORMANCE

I depend on student feedback to insure that TAs are performing well. I assume that everything is in order unless I receive feedback from students. I will take complaints in confidence, but it may be difficult to act on them without the TA inferring the identity of the student.

LETTERS OF REFERENCE

If you want a letter of reference, you must ask your lab TA if she/he will recommend you to me. If the TA agrees to recommend you, she/he will write a report to me. I will consider it and decide whether to write the letter. This procedure is needed because I do not get to know most students well enough to write an informed letter without the TAs advice. However, even if the TA writes a report to me, I occasionally decide it is too uninformative to allow me to write a compelling letter of reference in your behalf. I prefer not to write uninformative and unfavorable letters because they deprive the student of the opportunity to get a more positive letter from another referee. If the TA recommends you to me, you should visit me after class or in my office and tell me your name and that you have requested a letter of reference. Often I remember something useful to say about a face in the class that I cannot otherwise match with a name. If you use an institutional reference form, your TAs report to me must be on a copy of the form. Thus, the following procedure must be followed: Fill in spaces (type or print neatly) for the following information on both sides of the form:

1. Your name as it appears on your transcript.

2. My Name: Michael A. Bell

3. My Title:Associate Professor

4. Reason for concern/association:Instructor in Chordate Zoology course.

5. Period of association: spring semester 1992.

6. Affiliation/Address: Department of Ecology and Evolution, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 117945245.

7. Phone number: (516) 632-8574, 632-8600

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Also be sure to sign the waiver section concerning your right to see the form after it has been submitted, regardless of whether or not you choose to waive this right. When the form is filled out, give the original and copy to your lab TA who will fill out the copy and give it and the original to me. Provide an stamped addressed envelope with my name and my return address only for letters to be mailed off campus. If you use a form from another institution, make extra copies before filling it out in case I decline to submit it. I will not submit reference forms for students who have not followed these instructions. Check wit me after the semester in person or by phone to determine whether I submitted your letter, and with the recipient institution to determine whether it arrived. For questions please contact M. Bell e-mail