MCD BIO 191
Variable Topics Research Seminars: Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology
Description: Seminar, two hours. Designed for junior/senior departmental majors. Intended for students with strong commitment to pursue graduate studies in molecular, biochemical, physiological, and biomedical fields. Weekly variable topics course with reading, discussion, and presentation of paper selected from current literature. May be repeated once for credit. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 2.0
Units: 2.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - Professor Goldberg is an amazing professor. He really wants students to be able to synthesize material that they have learned from other classes and apply it to what is being taught in class. For the seminar, we focused on GMOs and we went from the very basis of how plasmids were made up to current technology. The class was intense because he would always be asking students questions about the paper, so make sure you read the papers in full detail.
Fall 2018 - Professor Goldberg is an amazing professor. He really wants students to be able to synthesize material that they have learned from other classes and apply it to what is being taught in class. For the seminar, we focused on GMOs and we went from the very basis of how plasmids were made up to current technology. The class was intense because he would always be asking students questions about the paper, so make sure you read the papers in full detail.
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2017 - Took MCDB 60 Biomedical Ethics with Professor Icreverzi in 2017 Summer Session A. It's not listed on Bruinwalk so I'll post here instead. She's a nice professor and grades with leniency but she tends to circumlocute on her points and get sidetracked when questions are asked, so she does not often finish her lecture before class ends. Overall the course is easy if you can learn to argue but class tends to be boring for the above reasons.
Summer 2017 - Took MCDB 60 Biomedical Ethics with Professor Icreverzi in 2017 Summer Session A. It's not listed on Bruinwalk so I'll post here instead. She's a nice professor and grades with leniency but she tends to circumlocute on her points and get sidetracked when questions are asked, so she does not often finish her lecture before class ends. Overall the course is easy if you can learn to argue but class tends to be boring for the above reasons.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - The topic of this seminar was Plant Development, so if you don't enjoy studying plants, I would really not recommend it. The class consisted of giving a solo 1 hour presentation on a paper you were assigned. Especially without having taken plant development before (I've only taken plant physiology), this class was not very fair. It was difficult to understand majority of the scientific papers without having to google everything, and googling can only get you so far. I thought it was unfair how we were expected to understand papers and then have participation be included in such a huge portion of our grade. I don't understand how anyone would be able to ask/answer questions and discuss without having a strong understanding in any of the topics. In short: plant development shouldn't even be a topic in the MCDB seminars unless MCDB C141 is a prerequisite. The whole quarter, we weren't updated on our grades as far as what we received on our presentation or pre-presentation outline that we turned in. We received no grades for any of our assignments so you can only imagine how annoying that was, even as the class concluded. On top of that, there was no clear grading criteria such as a rubric for any of the assignments we were given, including the 1 hour presentation which was like 50% of our grade. Overall, I would not recommend this class at all. I would recommend other topics in the seminars because plant development was not very interesting, especially since much of our course backgrounds aren't in plants.
Winter 2019 - The topic of this seminar was Plant Development, so if you don't enjoy studying plants, I would really not recommend it. The class consisted of giving a solo 1 hour presentation on a paper you were assigned. Especially without having taken plant development before (I've only taken plant physiology), this class was not very fair. It was difficult to understand majority of the scientific papers without having to google everything, and googling can only get you so far. I thought it was unfair how we were expected to understand papers and then have participation be included in such a huge portion of our grade. I don't understand how anyone would be able to ask/answer questions and discuss without having a strong understanding in any of the topics. In short: plant development shouldn't even be a topic in the MCDB seminars unless MCDB C141 is a prerequisite. The whole quarter, we weren't updated on our grades as far as what we received on our presentation or pre-presentation outline that we turned in. We received no grades for any of our assignments so you can only imagine how annoying that was, even as the class concluded. On top of that, there was no clear grading criteria such as a rubric for any of the assignments we were given, including the 1 hour presentation which was like 50% of our grade. Overall, I would not recommend this class at all. I would recommend other topics in the seminars because plant development was not very interesting, especially since much of our course backgrounds aren't in plants.
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