In this course designed for non-majors, we will study the microorganisms that inhabit, create, or contaminate food. The first half of the course will introduce students to topics in food safety such as food spoilage, food borne infections, and antibiotic resistance. In the second half of the course, students will learn how to harness the capabilities of the many microbes present in our environment to turn rotting vegetables or spoiling milk into delicious food. Students will also learn how next-generation technologies are revealing the important ecological dynamics shaping microbial communities in transforming food with possible beneficial effects on human health. Throughout the course, students will learn how to design, conduct, and analyze simple experiments while working with microbiology techniques, including DNA sequencing. No prerequisite.

This course will explore the biological bases of three aspects of the human condition, which are to varying degrees, also social constructs: race, gender and sexuality. In particular, we will explore human evolution and our current understanding of how genetics and the environment interact to generate the variation we observe in these human characteristics. Readings and discussions will be used to explore the relationships among the biological concepts, how we self-identify and how others categorize us. In the laboratory we will explore the way science examines and measures the variation we see in these ‘traits’. Prerequisite: High School level biology.

This course is appropriate for non-majors and interested biology majors, but does not fulfill 100-level curricular requirements for majors. It is designed to train students in the field, lab and museum skills of natural historians and to teach them how to identify plants and animals of the Hudson Valley, both in the wild and in the lab. The lecture portion of the class will introduce students to concepts in systematics and taxonomy, the history of natural history, the value of natural history to science, and how citizen science is exploiting crowdsourcing of natural history data. The laboratory portion of the course will focus on teaching students how to identify plants, birds, amphibians, aquatic and terrestrial insects, and fish. Students will learn how to use binoculars, dissecting scopes, traps, nets and other tools to visualize or capture specimens, and use field guides, phone apps, dichotomous keys and other resources to identify them. Field trips will take place on campus, in the Tivoli Bays Wildlife Management Area, and at several off campus locations throughout the Hudson Valley where students will practice their identification skills, collect specimens, and interact with naturalists from outside the Bard community. Students will build and curate their own insect and plant collections that will be added to Bard’s existing collections, use natural history information to answer some basic questions about the distribution and abundance of a species they choose, and as a final project they will create a natural history guide for a focal taxonomic group of their choice.

In the face of climate change, communities are tasked with the equitable management of shared natural resources. Environmental monitoring provides local and global communities with the data needed to inform planning to ensure the availability of drinkable water, fertile soils, and clean air. This course will introduce students to the practical aspects of environmental monitoring while exploring the related climate change and public health connections. Case studies will cover a range of approaches including worldwide programs (e.g., the United Nations Global Environment Monitoring System program) and local community-based initiatives. Students will learn how water, air, and soil quality can be monitored using sophisticated scientific instruments as well as simpler tools that enable public participation. Online course content and activities will guide students from across the Open Society University Network through the process of identifying potential local climate-related challenges. Based on identified community needs, students will find available data, evaluate environmental conditions and trends, and design an environmental monitoring study, resulting in a project proposal. Following review, selected proposals will be eligible for further development and support as pilot projects (through the OSUN Community Science Coalition program). Additional assignments will include readings, video lectures, completion of modules, and one-on-one and small group sessions. This is an OSUN class and is open to Bard students as well as students from multiple OSUN partner institutions.

Whether faint or bright, stars look like unchanging dots of light in the night sky, but the stars are not all alike and they do change. They are born, live, age and die, often spectacularly. Everything we know about stars, e.g. temperature, luminosity, size, mass and composition, comes from the light they radiate. Understanding how we know so much about such distant objects is an important topic in this course. This course begins with the closest star, the Sun, before considering different types of stars and their evolution. The laboratory component consists of working with astronomical data and spreadsheet calculations. Students registered for the course agree to review basic algebra skills, scientific notation and unit conversions through online worksheets and a quiz before the first class. Prerequisite: Passing score on the math placement test. Students must select a lab section as well.

BIO 102 Food Microbiology

Professor:

Gabriel Perron

Schedule/Location:

Fri 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM Reem Kayden Center 111/112

Distributional Area:

LS Laboratory Science

Credits: 4

Class cap: 16