1. Who can take the 483-484 course?
a) This course is normally reserved for MBB students in their senior year.
b) 694:483 is required as a co-requisite for all of the possible senior research courses including:
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694:481-482 |
Advanced Undergraduate Laboratory Research |
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694:489-490 |
Literature Research in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry |
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694:495-496 |
Honors Laboratory Research |
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694:497-498 |
Henry Rutgers Honors Research or other College Research |
c) In the case of a student taking 694:381-382 (Undergraduate Laboratory Research) in their junior year and no research in their senior year, that student is still required to take 694:483-484 in their senior year.
d) Note that the 694:483 course is designed for the MBB faculty to monitor the research projects of the MBB students and to give students experience and exposure to writing their senior thesis, oral presentations, honors criteria etc... The course will also have guest speakers.
2. Course Overview.
The first meeting is designed to inform the students on their research projects, honors thesis, thesis writing and oral presentations. The next part of the course will consist of outside guest speakers from academia and industry who will present their perspectives on how to choose a career and what influenced their own career choices. You should feel free to ask questions during the presentation. During the last part of the course we will break up into smaller sections each taught and graded by one of the section instructors. These smaller sections will serve as a forum for the oral presentation of student research or literature reports pertinent to your senior research project, regardless of whether you are following the Laboratory or Non-Laboratory Options in the MBB major.
3. Requirements for both Semester's Talks.
You will give a 20 minute oral presentation related to your research activities. You should also plan for 5 minutes of discussion/questions for a total of 25 minutes. Note: you should target your presentation for a scientific audience, therefore this is not a "Newsweek Magazine Level" or "New York Times Journalistic Level" type of presentation. Thus the introduction, results, conclusions of your talk should match the audience which means you assume everyone has a B.S. degree in molecular biology and biochemistry. One week prior to your talk you must email an abstract (~1 page) to Dr. Gunderson and to your section instructor. We will critique it and very likely we will ask for you to submit a revised abstract. We will then distribute the revised abstract by email to the students in your section. Students who are presenting are expected to invite their P.I. (or Grad. student or Postdoc) from your lab to sit in on the presentation.
4. Role of Discussants (participation is 20% of grade).
In order to encourage discussion, each speaker will have designated Discussants. Each Discussant should prepare several thoughtful questions for the speaker. Note however, you are expected to participate even when you are not a discussant. Your 20% participation grade is based on overall participation, not just on the one day that you are a discussant. When it is your week to be a discussant you should take 20 - 30 minutes to read up on the abstract topic both from a textbook and by looking up one of the original articles that is listed in the abstract. Do this for both abstracts and come to class with intelligent, higher than average questions. Note that we are not trying to trick or trip up the speaker or make the speaker look dumb. The goal is not to ask the hardest, deepest questions but at least some better than average questions. Anyone can ask what the graph means or the GFP marker or how is this technique exactly done etc.... A discussant should come with better questions than that. |
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