Senior Seminar (GEO 4332)

Spring 2007

Lecture:  Thursday in 13/221, 8:00-9:10h

This course is designed to allow students to develop and demonstrate skills in researching, preparing, and presenting scientific information to an informed, nonspecialist audience.  The mechanism for demonstrating these skills will be an oral presentation on a topic to be decided in agreement with the instructor; all presentations will be 12 minutes long, with up to three minutes provided for questions and answers.  All talks will be open to Environmental Studies faculty, students, and staff.  Students will submit a written abstract summarizing their topic prior to preparing an oral presentation.

Prerequisites:  upper level standing in Environmental Studies

Laboratory Corequisite:  none

Assignments:  All assignments are due in the professor’s office (or his departmental mailbox) by 1700h (i.e., 5 p.m.) on the due date.  Late assignments will be penalized at a rate of 1 grade per day, beginning at 1701 h on the due date (e.g., the maximum attainable grade for a paper turned in at 5:30 p.m. on the due date will be a B, rather than an A).  All written assignments will be subject to a plagiarism review via the Turnitin software package.

Attendance Policy:  Lectures will begin promptly at the scheduled meeting time.  Students are expected to attend all scheduled class meetings, as lectures will provide important information that cannot be gained from other sources.  The responsibility rests solely on the student to obtain any and all material presented during a missed period.

Comprehensive Exam:  In place of a final exam, a departmental comprehensive exam will be administered on Tuesday, May 1, from 8:00 to 10:30; alternative arrangements will be made for students who have a conflict with this exam block.  This comprehensive exam is intended to assess your comprehension of a range of topics studied in a selection of courses within Environmental Studies and will be tailored to your specific departmental program (e.g., Environmental Policy, Natural Science, or Geography).

eLearning material:  Course material (including course notes, supplemental readings, and web links) may be supplied online via the eLearning service (http://elearning.uwf.edu).

Student Evaluation:  A course grade will be assigned based on student performance on homework and presentations (written and oral) as listed below.

Textbook (required):  none; appropriate material will be made available via the library reserve and the eLearning systems.

ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

Academic conduct:  Expectations for academic conduct and classroom behavior are described on pages 46-7 in the UWF Student Life handbook available online at http://www.uwf.edu/uwfmain/stuHandbk/

Plagiarism Policy:  Plagiarism is a serious offense and will not be tolerated under any circumstances.  The course plagiarism policy will follow UWF and College of Arts and Sciences policies as described in http://uwf.edu/cas/aasr/Plagiarism.pdf.   All written assignments will be subject to a plagiarism review via the Turnitin software package.

Special technology utilized by students:  medium (personal computer, spreadsheet programs, calculator, maps, and similar).

Student Learning Outcomes:  While successfully completing this course, students will demonstrate their abilities to conduct focused research on environmental issues and present a summary of that material to a general, non-specialist audience, including peers and faculty.  Students will also refine their abilities to provide and receive constructive criticism in regards to science and policy research and presentations.

Students with Special Needs:  The University’s policies for students with special needs is described in the UWF Disabled Student Services publication available at http://uwf.edu/sdrc/dss_pub.pdf

Tentative Course Schedule:  Please note that the following schedule is tentative; the instructor may add or delete material to meet the course objectives and student interest.  All changes to this tentative plan will be recorded in an updated and amended syllabus that will be supplied to all students in class, via e-mail, or on the course website.