Text: Freeman and Herron, Evolutionary Analysis, 4th Edition.
Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
Website: http://wps.prenhall.com/esm_freeman_evol_4/
Course objectives: Gain insight into the processes that have
shaped the history of life on earth.
Cheating on an exam will result in failure of the course and further University discipline. Note that CSUN policy has changed as follows: (1) if the instructor becomes aware of cheating, plagiarism, or other violations of the conduct code the instructor is required to report the misconduct to the Office of the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, and (2) if a student fails a course because of academic misconduct, they can no longer repeat the course for grade forgiveness.
It is your responsibility to be aware of the CSUN student conduct code, and to follow it. The conduct code can be found at: http://www.csun.edu/a&r/soc/studentconduct.html
Class Withdrawal The Biology Department withdrawal policy states:
"Unrestricted withdrawals are permitted only until the end of the third
week. Thereafter, requests to drop a class will be honored only when a
verifiable serious and compelling reason exists and when there is no viable
alternative to withdrawal. Poor performance is NOT an acceptable
reason for withdrawal. During the last three weeks of the semester withdrawals
will not be approved except when a student is withdrawing from ALL classes
for verifiable medical reasons."
Classroom ettiquette: don't be late, turn off your cell phones.
Grading:
You can receive a grade of A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D or F in
this course. I do not grade on a curve (hard selection!!).
Your grade will be based on 350 points.
There will be three exams, each worth 100 class points (300 class points total). There are 6 weeks of material covered. For 5 of those weeks, you are to do a 'chapter review quiz' by answering the "chapter study questions " for any one of the chapters covered that week. Chapter study questions are online at http://wps.prenhall.com/esm_freeman_evol_4/ ; email me the result (dave.gray@csun.edu). Each of these 5 chapter review quizzes will be worth 10 class points (50 points total). All chapter review quizzes must be emailed to me by the Sunday following the week the chapter was covered in lecture; late chapter review quizzes will not be counted. You have the option of doing a chapter review quiz for the additional week for extra credit (10 class points each) if you wish. I recommend you do the chapter review quiz for every chapter, as a minimum of 50% of the lecture exam questions will be from the chapter review quizzes.
Basic Schedule
Week |
Topics |
1 |
May 26 Evidence of Evolution
(Ch. 2)
|
2 |
June 1 Microevolutionary
Population Genetics I (Ch. 6)
|
3 |
June 8 Multilocus Evolution II: Quantitative
genetics (Ch. 9) |
4 |
June 15 Kin Selection
and Social Behavior (Ch. 12)
part 1, part 2 June 16 Life History Theory and Analysis (Ch. 13) June 17 Chapter 14 Information June 18 In class question/answer study day. |
5 |
June 22
Exam
2.Study Guide June 23 Speciation and Diversification (Ch. 16) part 1 June 24 Speciation and Diversification (Ch. 16) part 2 June 25 Constructing Phylogenies (Ch. 4) |
6 |
June 29
Origin
of Life (Ch. 17) June 30 Cambrian Explosion (Ch. 18) July 1 Extinction Video July 2 Human Evolution (Ch. 20) |
7 |
July 6 In class question/answer study day. July 7 Exam 3. Study Guide |