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This course is designed to help students as they prepare to apply to medical school. The major goals of the course surround putting together a successful application and interviewing successfully. Assignments and classwork will focus on writing and refining personal statements, summarizing previous experiences in a way that highlights their value, and preparing for critical thinking interviews. Students will continue to prepare for their MCAT by completing Kaplan chapter homework and taking two full length exams and analyzing the results.

This course will focus on how psychoactive drugs modify nervous system function and human behavior. The neurochemical and behavioral techniques used to study drug action will be addressed. Students will learn how drugs are metabolized by the body (pharmacokinetics), act (pharmacodynamics) and affect behavior (psychopharmacology), gaining comprehensive understanding of the neurotransmitter systems of the brain and how different drugs affect these systems. The laboratory component will utilize the nematode C.

This one-semester course is an introduction to the basic concepts and inter-relationships needed to understand the complexities of environmental problems. A survey of the characteristics of natural environments and human populations is followed by a study of environmental degradation and alternative solutions to environmental problems. The student is introduced to the roles of many disciplines (including both the natural and social sciences) in the study of environmental problems.

This course introduces the mathematical and theoretical bases for chemical equilibria and kinetics. The extrema principle will be used to predict the direction of chemical equilibria in a wide variety of chemical and biochemical reactions. This principle shows that reactions which maximize entropy and minimize enthalpy are spontaneous. We will study several ways to calculate familiar quantities like Gibbs energy, as well as new, more sophisticated quantities like partition functions to better understand molecular driving forces.

Microorganisms represent the largest uncharacterized portion of life on Earth.  Bacteria, protists, algae and fungi are often difficult to see in the environment, but comprise the majority of biodiversity.  The unique metabolic capabilities of the bacteria and archaea greatly impact the composition of our soil, air, water and rocks and play key roles in biogeochemical and nutrient cycles.  This course will focus on current understanding of the diversity of microbes and their roles in the environment.

A field biology-ecology course with laboratory for non-majors emphasizing the plants and animals of the Northeast. The course focuses on ecological factors and processes affecting individual organisms, communities and ecosystems. Students visit a variety of aquatic and terrestrial habitats to study local ecosystems and to learn the natural history of local plants and animals and how to identify them. Students also learn how to conduct a scientific study and record observational data.

This course is the second of a two-semester sequence providing a systematic study of the ideas and discoveries that transformed physics in the twentieth century. Topics in this course include the quantum mechanical model of hydrogen, statistical mechanics, and applications such as solid-state physics, nuclear structure and reactions, and elementary particles. There is one laboratory per week in addition to classwork. Prerequisites: MATH 205 and a grade of 2.0 or higher in PHYS 221. Offered Spring semester only.