BIOL 4805 – Biology Capstone Seminar

When: Wednesday 2:00-3:20pm (LANG 318) and Friday 2:00- 3:20 PM (ENV 110)

Course Goals: Provide students with opportunities to develop skills in teamwork, scientific presentations and critical thinking.

Course Description: Students read, present, and discuss scientific papers related to a weekly topic in the biological sciences. Students will also attend a weekly seminar on the same topic given by invited speakers who are prominent local, regional or national researchers. Also, each student will prepare a term paper addressing a high priority, controversial biological science issue of their choice.

Course Expectations: This course is a participation course. Students are expected to actively participate in all discussions, and attendance is required at all class meetings. Each Wednesday, the class will review and discuss a scientific paper that students have read prior to class. The review and discussion will be in the format of an NSF or National Institutes of Health grant review panel. A pair of students will each prepare a Powerpoint presentation and overview of the paper to be discussed. One student will be an advocate for the science in the paper while the other student will criticize the science. Each of the presenting students’ initial Powerpoint presentation should be approximately 20 minutes long. Presenters may, at their own discretion, choose to include information/comments originating from the Friday seminar that is being discussed. These introductory presentations will be followed by an opportunity for rebuttal by each of the two presenters. Rebuttals by the presenters will be followed by questions selected from those submitted by the rest of the class members. At the end of the discussion all class members (i.e. the entire NSF/NIH review panel) will vote to approve or reject the decision to fund the project. Each student will be a presenter in two of these panel reviews. Selection of the members of each pair of presenters will be on a volunteer basis. If no volunteers occur, the selection will be a random pairing. The following website is a PowerPoint tutorial for scientific presentations you may find useful:

At each Wednesday discussion meeting, all students must:

-Read the assigned paper prior to class

-Prepare 3 questions relating to the quality of the science in the paper. Questions will be turned in at the beginning of class (presenters do not have to prepare questions)

-Participate in the class discussion

Term Paper Preparation: During the course, each student will prepare a 6-10 page evaluation of a high profile controversial topic in biology (e.g. global climate change, genetically modified organisms, stem cell research etc.).

The paper should be in the style of an opinion piece in a scientific journal. Key claims should have scientific literature citations, but public opinion can be included through reference to popular press releases. The paper should demonstrate the student’s critical thinking by building a case for one or the other sides of the issue. This paper may be submitted anytime during the semester but not later than Friday May 1, 2015.

Grading:18%Attendance and Participation (each absence -4%; more than 3 absences

may result in removal from the course or a failing grade)

32%Discussion Questions

30%Class Presentations of Papers

20% Term Paper

100%(90% = A, 80%=B, 70%=C, 60%=D,<60%=F)

Capstone Requirements: This course may be used to fulfill the University Core Requirement for a capstone. All students will participate in capstone assessments as part of the course requirements.

Friday Seminar Speaker Schedule for Spring 2015:

DateSpeaker (UNT host)

Jan 23:Dr. Jyoti Shah, UNT – “Plant-interaction with phloem sap-feeding aphids: The Tug-O-War for superiority”

Jan 30:Dr. Loren Hayes, Univ. TN-Chattanooga (Roberts) – “Mammalian plural breeding: Why bother?”

Feb 6:Dr. Catalina Pislariu, Noble Foundation (Dickstein) – “Genetic dissection of the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis in the model legume Medicagotruncatula”

Feb 13:Dr. Debra Mohnen, Univ. Georgia (Dixon) - TBD

Feb 20: Dr. Barry Coller, Rockefeller Univ. (Jag) – TBD

Feb 27:Dr. Mark Jutila, Montana State Univ. (McCoy) - TBD

Mar 6:Dr. Graham Hatfull, Univ. Pittsburgh (Hughes) – “Exploration and exploitation of mycobacteriophages”

Mar 13:Dr. Debashish Bhattacharya, Rutgers Univ. (Azad) –“The design of fitter algae in the lab and in nature”

Mar 20:Spring break

Mar 27:Dr. Giri Athrey, Texas A&M (Johnson) – TBD

Apr 3:Dr. Chun-Li Zhang, UT Southwestern (Fuchs) – TBD

Apr 10:Dr. Jeffrey Richards, Univ. British Columbia (Crossley) – TBD

Apr 17:Dr. Eric Schmelz, Univ. California San Diego (Shah) – TBD

Apr 24:Dr. Timothy Shafer, U.S. E.P.A. (Gross) – TBD

May 1:Dr. Dan Kunz, UNT – TBD

Course Instructor: Dr. B. Venables, EESAT 310X. Email:

Office hours by appointment.