This course is one of the three second year courses you would take when in the Origins Research Speciailization. You might also consider it as a biology student or any general science student seeking an elective.
I believe in the upcoming year, it will be the fourth time the course has been run so it's very new.
What happens is exactly what the course description says. You study the tree of life from a wide to narrow view. A lot of the time, there are student run presentations on what was interesting about specific phyla. There may even be a few interesting guest speakers on phyla (Dr. Gunderman's part on insects was awesome!).
The exams may be run slightly different each year but Dr. Stone's idea of how it should be run is as a computer exam/group exam that's open book. This doesn't make it any easier with the way he runs things but it makes it a lot more interesting. The exam I had in my year was a print-outable one that was all multiple choice - but it was intense!! You had to research a lot on that exam but I found I learned more doing it that way than in any other.
The projects you get to do in this class are also very interesting. The largest project you get to do is what they call a 'treehouse' and it may get published on the
tree of life website. Because of this class, I can now say I'm a published author on decapods!! YES!
Origins 2FF3
