David,
I used Campbell Essential Biology by E.J. Simon, J.B.Reece and J.L. Dickey.
It is a book for non-biology majors that has 20 chapters, all of them with a
focus on evolution and examples, and nice drawings and pictures. Twelve of the
20 chapters are geared toward cell-DNA, then three chapters on taxonomy and
systematics. The last three include populations ecology, communities
ecosystems, and the biosphere. Therefore, you will have to add extra material
to recreate those last topics.
I created several evolution labs using beans or the web pages below, designed
a ppt to introduce Darwin's life and thoughts, and added many lab activities to
learn about mark-recapture techniques, estimating population growth rate
size, population growth models, climate change, and identifying biomes.
Evolution links to check are:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1300397304/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/devitt_02
I used those as base for the lab activities.
Hope this helps.
Helena
Helena Puche, Ph. D.
Adjunct Assistant Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago
Biological Sciences, 3464 SES, MC
066
845 West Taylor Street
Chicago, IL 60607hpu...@uic.edu
--- On Fri, 5/25/12, Johnson, David R drjohns...@utep.edu wrote:
From: Johnson, David R drjohns...@utep.edu
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Non-Majors Biology
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Date: Friday, May 25, 2012, 2:49 PM
Greetings,
I am teaching a contemporary biology course for non-science majors in the
fall and for the first time I am fortunate to be able to organize the course at
my discretion. Effectively, I can present any material I wish as long as I hit
broad themes such as Cell Theory and Evolution. While this is certainly doable,
I am struggling deciding exactly what content to present. The course is meant
to present the science of contemporary issues that may be important and/or
interesting to the non-science student rather than a broad survey course
encompassing all of biology. There is another such survey course with a set
syllabus that I am not teaching, and there are two other sections of
contemporary biology that are focusing on genetics. I would like to focus on
the many ecological issues that both affect and are affected by humans. My
struggle involves the fact that this may be the only (or last) biology these
students get before we cast them out into the world.
So I want to be sure and cover all my bases.
I am writing Ecolog with two questions. First, what is the relative merit of
including as much biology as possible as opposed to focusing on fewer but
perhaps more directly relevant ecological topics? These students will most
likely not become scientists, and certainly won't need to memorize the
structure of all the amino acids, for example. On the other hand, would I be
cheating them somehow by not providing enough information to them for making
informed decisions on topics outside of my direct area of expertise, such as
developmental biology and stem cells?
The other question I have involves textbooks. Is anyone aware of a text (or
perhaps pop-science books) designed for the non-science major that focuses on
ecology, in particular the involvement of humans in ecological systems? I
haven't been able to find something I like and am looking for recommendations.
Thanks and I'll circulate a summary response if/when the discussion runs its
course.
Cheers,
David
David R. Johnson PhD.
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Systems Ecology Lab
University of Texas at El Paso
drjohns...@utep.edu
