NATURAL HISTORY

Instructor: James Hannan, Ph. D. Office Hours:

Office: I3-305 Tues 11:00 – 2:00pm

Voice Mail: 619-388-2786 Thurs 11:00 – 1:00pm

ATTENDANCE:

A student will be administratively dropped after two (2) unexcused absences (lecture and/or laboratory). If you attend another professor's laboratory class as a makeup, you must notify me in writing by the following week, or you will be marked as absent. 10 points are deducted per field trip missed. These can only be made up by attending another professor's class the same week.

Note: You cannot make up a lab after the week it is given because none of the specimens will be available. Being late to laboratory 5 minutes will be treated as a disruptive event and will result in 5 points being deducted from the a lab quiz.

FIELD TRIPS:

Field trips are conducted to various natural communities in Southern California during the normal classroom period. Attendance is mandatory. Absences result in loss of 10 points on the next lab quiz. Absences count towards being dropped from the course. For night students the required field trips are those that can be conducted on the student’s free time such as the Birch Aquarium trip.

TRANSPORTATION:

Transportation to and from field trip sites is the responsibility of the student.

LAB QUIZZES:

-These are normally given during the lab period and involve the recognition of specimens by their common names. It may also include answering questions about these specimens from information given in lab, field trips, lecture or in the texts.

-Lab quizzes must be made up before Friday at the end of the week they are given.

-Quizzes must be turned in when called for or you will lose points.

SCHEDULE OF QUIZZES:

There will be approximately 15 quizzes at 20-35 points each. These will all be announced a week in advance .

LAB WRITEUPS:

The instructor will assign some of the lab exercises in your lab book to writtenup as per the instructions given for that assignment. These will then be turned in on the date given by the instructor.

Lab writeup grades will be based on

1. Neatness and legibility

2. Completion

3. Accuracy of answers

4. Only selected questions may be graded and your score determined on the basis of

these.

5. Lab's lose 1 point per day late (after 5 days they are worth 0 points.)

LAB BEHAVIOR

Refer to Lecture Syllabus.

LAB GRADE

Points are earned from quizzes and written assignments as follows;

1) Lab exercise write-ups = 3 points each

2) Quizzes = 20-35 points each

Your lab grade will be equal to the total points which you earn on lab quizzes, write-ups of lab exercises in the lab book, and other assignments as given in lab by your instructor, divided by the total possible points that can be earned on these assignments. That is;

Lab Grade = Total points you earn/total points possible.

The lab grade is then determined according to the following:

A = 90%, B = 80%, C = 70&, D = 60%, F = 59% or less

GRADE: If you have a disagreement with the grade I have recorded for an assignment, exam, quiz, etc., you MUST show me the actual graded paper itself in order for me to change your score. Therefore, students are responsible for keeping all their quizzes and graded labs until the end of the semester. This does not mean keeping a record of the scores, but rather keeping the actual documents.