Syllabus

Introduction to the Professions
Department of Biological, Chemical, and Physical Sciences
fall 2006

Instructor: Andrew Howard, howard@iit.edu

IIT office: Life Sciences Room 174
IIT phone: 312-567-5881; fax 312-567-3576; cell 773-368-5067
APS phone: 630-252-0640; fax 630-252-0652

Course Website: http://csrri.iit.edu/~howard/itp/

Course Textbooks:

• James Trefil, 101 things you don't know about science and no one else does either. Mariner: ISBN 0395877407. This book consists of 101 two-to-four-page essays about specific topics in science. The first ten are essential, and I expect everyone to read them in the first few days of class. We will have two writing assignments associated with those first ten essays. The others will serve as points of discussion during the semester. By the end of the semester you will have read the whole book, and I think you'll be glad you had done so.
• Gregory Derry, What science is and how it works. Princeton: ISBN 0691095507. We're still thinking about how to use this text. Stay tuned.

Department Advisors:

Part of the purpose of this course is to acquaint you with resources available at IIT. One of the resources of which you should avail yourself is your academic advisor within the department. Those advisors are:

• Physics: Prof. Christopher White, ext. 73734, whitec@iit.edu
• Chemistry: Prof. Sandra Whaley-Bishnoi, ext. 78922, bishnoi@iit.edu
• MBB: Andrew Howard, as above;
• Biology: Prof. Benjamin Stark, ext.73488, starkb@iit.edu
• Pre-medical: Prof. Kathryn Spink, ext. 73441, spink@iit.edu.

Course Goals:

• Understanding interconnections:
• among the sciences
• between the sciences and engineering
• between the sciences and the wider academic world
• understanding the realities of a career in the sciences
• understanding procedures:
• introduction to the way IIT works
• familiarity with the workings of the BCPS department
• knowing who your advisor is
• academic resources: library, computers, ARC
• extensive practice in oral and written communication

Class Hours and Locations

Section 001 will meet from 1:50 to 3:05 pm each Tuesday from 29 August through 5 December in Wishnick Hall Room 117. Section 002 will meet from 8:35am to 9:50am each Thursday from 24 August through 7 December in Life Sciences Room 129, except for Thursday 19 October, when we will be on spring break, and Thursday 23 November, which is during Thanksgiving week. Accordingly we will meet jointly with the Tuesday section that week. Those of you with a schedule conflict on Tuesday afternoons at 1:50 should discuss this with me during the semester. I will be absent for a few other class periods; for those days we will either have guest speakers, we will cancel class, or we will schedule the class for a different time in the week. Stay tuned for details.

ItP Laboratory Sessions

We will have lab sessions in some weeks of the semester and not in others. For the most part these will be ungraded activities, although attendance will be required and there may be some graded activities. Details about these lab sessions will be provided after the course begins. Among the topics to be covered in the lab sessions, either through actual experiments or through guided tutorials, are:

Metrication lab	Units and measures	Excel spreadsheet creation
html coding	Water	Energy

The students enrolled in physics 100-001 and physics 100-002 will have a special set of labs led by Profs. Christopher White and Carlo Segre; we'll provide further details soon.

Office Hours

Tuesday, 9am-noon; and Thursday, 10am-1pm in Life Sciences 174 (but not during the first week).
Others by appointment (see phone numbers and e-mail addresses)

Turning in assignments:

The preferred technique for turning in assignments is directly through the Assignments function on Blackboard. If you cannot use that facility for some reason, you may turn them in as hard-copy, as text e-mail, or as e-mail attachments. Both for Blackboard and for attachments, please note that there is a finite number of formats I am willing to accept:

• Microsoft Word format
• HTML
• Text
• AppleWorks

Be sure to put your name in the body of your assignment. If you turn in assignments by e-mail, please put your name in the body of your e-mail and in your attachment. If you don't have a computer yourself, you can use the machines at Galvin Library to compose or send your assignments. There's probably only one assignment for which you might find it easier to write your answers in longhand—the assignment due on 28 October. Even there it's pretty easy to do it as a table in a spreadsheet, an html table, or even a table in a high-end word processing program like Microsoft Word.

Grading Plan:

Your grades will be assessed as follows. I reserve the right to make minor changes in the percentages associated with these components.

• attendance: 20%
  unexcused absences will result in deductions from this portion
• classroom oral work: 5%
  your participation in class discussions counts here.written homework: 35%
  various written exercises, laid out in the assignments webpage. Generally 300-500 words each.
• oral presentation: 14%
  Late in the semester you will make a group presentation to the rest of the class, using a computer-based presentation or overheads. Each member of the group should expect to speak for about five minutes, so if you form a three-person group, then the group will have fifteen minutes to speak altogether. Some of you may be tempted to fly solo on this assignment. This will be allowed but discouraged, i.e. you're not likely to get quite as good a grade if you go this route.
• Laboratory exercises: 6%
  The nature of these labs is still to be determined, as are the dates and times of the activities. Stay tuned.
• special project: 20% (due 1700 hours 18 December)
  options:
1. written report on a research project of your choice
2. review of one of the books on the booklist
3. review of a book of your choosing upon instructor's approval
4. a detailed discussion of the role of science in one of the arts

You should discuss your choice with me before spending a lot of time preparing it, unless you plan to read and review one of the books on the booklist. I rarely veto a proposed topic, but I may be able to offer some productive suggestions. You will turn in a rough draft of your project prior to the final version. I will critique and return the rough draft, and you'll have an opportunity to rectify problems in time for the final version.

Policies:

• Homework is due on Friday afternoon at 1700 hours, one week after the lecture on which it is based. The specific due dates are given in the assignments webpage. I have a mailbox in the departmental mailroom (LS178) and another in my outer office (LS174), and you can always send e-mail. Late work will be accepted with the following penalties:

  Days Late	Penalty (points from 100)
  0-6.99	0
  7-13.99	7
  14-20.99	14
  21-27.99	21
  28-34.99	28
  35-41.99	35
  ≥42	100

• You will receive no credit for assignments turned ion seven or more weeks late, as the table implies.
• Special project writeup is due at 5 pm Saturday 16 December 2006. I reserve the right to refuse to accept the project writeups late.

Writing:

Writing is important to this course. I will be grading your written work for content, grammar, logic, rhetoric, and spelling. Many people mistakenly believe that a career in the sciences does not require communication skills. I hope to dispell this belief in this class.

Book List:

Everyone in the class needs to have read at least one of the books on the booklist. An intermediate-length (1300-2500-word) commentary or review of one of these books is one of the options for the special project for the course, but even if you choose one of the other options for the special project, I expect you to have read one of the books. I have copies of most of them available for you to borrow, but you are also welcome to buy or borrow them. Most are in print and readily available. The list will be provided next week. You may also use a book of your own choosing, provided that you clear it well in advance with me. What I'm looking for are books that illustrate the interface between science and society and between one scientific discipline and another.

Last updated by Andrew Howard on Wednesday 23 August 2006.