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Somatic and Molecular Cell Genetics |
Students in biologist Tim Lyerla's Somatic and Molecular Cell Genetics class don't spend much time listening to lectures. Instead, they are hard at work in the lab working on research that will eventually contribute new information to the Genome Project. These upper-level students—mostly seniors and graduate students working side-by-side— spend the semester working on a class project to develop a hygromycin-resistant-or drug-resistant-amphibian cell line. Simulataneously, each student is required to work on an independent research project related to the class project. Learn more about these individual projects.
Taught in the spring as an extension of a cell-culture course Lyerla teaches in the fall, this course supports developmental learning, the careful build up of knowledge and experience that gives students a deep understanding of their chosen subject matter and strong critical-thinking skills. It's centered on a hands-on, inquiry-based approach that excites students' imaginations and propels them to levels of achievement that are sometimes beyond even their own expectations.
Active learning in the lab
Unlike a typical lab course, Lyerla and his students don't know how their research will turn out. And it is this process and the unknown outcome, they all say, that make the course fun and the research "real."
"I want my students to learn the research experience, above and beyond the work they've done," says Lyerla, who requires each student to do a final presentation and write a paper based on their research. There are no exams in the course. "These students have been through a lot of exams all their lives," he says. "I want them to spend time in the laboratory, or developing a Web page or finding out the background of particular cell lines instead of getting into the kind of traditional mode where there's a certain format to learn something. There is no specific thing to learn in this course, but I want them to develop their expertise and to use that as part of the course."
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Additional Resources
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Professor Tim Lyerla
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Sarah Deroko '03
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Max Somberg '04 |
Tim Markantes '04
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