Welcome! Here's an intriguing way to enhance your college adventure --- enroll in a course that approaches a subject from the perspective of solving problems.

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) involves working on problems that focus on central themes within a discipline. As a student in a PBL course, you'll investigate cases that initially you don't know how to solve and, in conversations with your student colleagues and the course professor(s), determine what you need to learn in order to solve them. Assignments in PBL courses are staged, complex, and real and they usually require teamwork to do them successfully. Consequently, you'll make friends with whom you can discuss and share ideas. Moreover, because you get to suggest what you want to learn and help design the syllabus, you'll sharpen your skills in critical thinking and find yourself more highly motivated to study. You'll also get individual attention. PBL courses aim to sharpen your thinking, speaking, and writing skills and teach you how to apply them to the solution of real problems --- abilities that are useful throughout your college career and important for eventually getting a job.

This course will examine problems in biocatastrophes, specifically (but not limited to) invasions and immigrations, epidemics, population explosions, and extinctions. Problem-Based Learning approach will permit us to escape the traditional lecture setting in order to explore biological as well as psychosocial impacts of biocatastrophes. By working in groups and examining published documents on biocatastrophes as a starting point, you should gain insight into the mechanisms of ecology, the workings of the nervous, cardiovacscular, and immune systems, the management of microbes and viruses, and protection of our nutrition and food supply. Throughout the course, you will learn principles for analyzing the web of biodiversity, all of which should help you become a more scientifically literate and rational citizen.