Courses

IB 100, Biology in Today’s World (Spring, Face-to-face in 2014 and 2015, Online only starting 2016)
This general education course for non-majors covers three major themes of modern biology: the environment, genetics and biotechnology, and evolution. The goal of this course is for students to master the fundamental concepts of biology so that they can make informed decisions about issues in which biology affects their personal lives, local communities, and society as a whole.

IB 452/NRES 462, Ecosystem Ecology (Fall, 2017 and 2019, Even years starting 2022)
Distribution and structure of ecosystems on earth; integration of multiple disciplines to gain a holistic view of ecosystem function; ecosystem concepts as they apply to understand natural and anthropogenic environmental change.

IB 488/GEOL 488/ATMS 420/NRES 478, Environmental Stable Isotopes (Spring 2015, discontinued)
Stable isotopes are powerful tools for studying environmental processes, acting as tracers of resource origin, fate, and flux and integrators of system processes. The goal of this course is to provide a fundamental knowledge base and hands-on training for students to become practitioners of natural abundance and enriched stable isotope techniques. The course focuses on stable isotopes of biologically-relevant light elements (C, H, N, O, S). We also review case studies demonstrating application of these techniques to disciplines including anthropology, animal, insect, and plant biology, biogeochemistry, biometeorology, ecosystem ecology, forensics, microbial ecology, paleoclimatology, and paleoecology.