BIOL 143 - Plants, People, Planet Laboratory

1 Credit(s)

This course covers a broad array of topics in “general botany,” including some basic plant anatomy and physiology, plant interactions with other organisms in the environment, and plant identification. The course also helps students understand the process of science (via botanical research and exploration) through autobiographical narratives of several modern botanists. Students focus specifically on “belonging” within the culture of science, and the course highlights experiences of people from groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Finally, the course touches on the intersection between plants and varied human cultures in the context of food and medicine, but also in contexts around cultural knowledge of plants and the exploitation or eradication of this cultural knowledge. This is meant to be a fun and exploratory course, introducing the culture and discipline of science as a field through the lens of botany. The laboratory portion of this course must be taken concurrently with the lecture section (BIOL 142). The laboratory provides hands-on activities and experiments using plants. Some labs are conducted outdoors, weather permitting.
Corequisite(s): BIOL 142