Courses

Terrestrial Microbiology 145 (4 units)

Exploration of the diversity of archaea, bacteria, viruses, slime molds and fungi that often associate with humans, animals, plants (special focus on symbiotic interactions), and extreme terrestrial environments. Topics include ecology, evolution, genetics, systematics, and physiology. This class is taught in the fall quarter and includes a discussion section. Students are required to lead one or two group presentations and complete one final paper on a topic of their choice.

Student Testimonials

"I really appreciated the structure of your terrestrial microbio course. It was enjoyable and really prepared me for grad school. A lot of what we do in our program involves critically analyzing published articles and presenting patient cases to our class." - Sahana Arkalgud (2017 Fall student, currently in PA school)

Plant Physiology 157C-L (4 units)

The course explores the link between structure and function that contributes to the development, reproduction, and diversity of plants. The course includes one three-hour lab section. There will be a special emphasis on data collection, analyses, and visualization in the lab component. Student assessment includes evaluation of two open-note take-home midterm exams, a non-cumulative final covering the last two weeks of the course, short weekly quizzes, detailed lab notebook, two project presentations, and an independent project with final presentation.

Student Testimonials

"Taking your class was an important step in my undergraduate career because it was the only class I took at UCSB with a lab that allowed students to develop and explore their own research questions, and it showed me just how interesting it can be to have the opportunity to explore one's own interests in research." - Lauren Skube (2018 Spring student, currently Master's student at the Bren School)

"All of the video lessons were incredible! Amidst all the transitions to online, I really think this course handled it the best. The quizzes were good to keep me on top of things, and all the videos were very information rich! I thought the exam questions were also clever and ensured we couldn't just directly copy answers from videos, but had to synthesize the information (graphing questions especially!)." - anonymous review (2020 Spring student)