• 17^thAnnual CBU Student Research Poster Session. 

Noon--1:45 pm Sabbatini Lounge (East Lounge), 2nd floor Thomas Center 
• Dominic Dunn Award Presentation 12:45 PM

• Donations and raffle sales to support the Church Health Center

Photos: 2012 CBU School of Sciences Charity Volleyball Game

• New students are welcome. You do not have to be an official member of Tri-Beta to attend and participate!  Meetings are usually Thursdays, 12:30 pm in CW105.

Saturday, 31 March 2012    Tennessee Academy of Sciences Collegiate Meeting

• The 2012 TAS meeting will be hosted by LeMoyne Owen College, Memphis. 

Abstract deadline = 13 March 2012.
• Meeting Registration Form 2012
• Abstract Guidelines 2012 (pdf)
• Abstract Submission Form (2012 version)
• CBU's 2012 TAS webpage includes full titles, affiliations and a link to abstract for the CBU presentations.  
• The West Tennessee Academy of Science Collegiate Division of TAS rotates through colleges and universities in West Tennessee. It is LeMoyne Owen College's turn to host the event this spring. The meeting will be Saturday 31 March 2012. Registration is at 8:30 am and the TAS meetings usually run from 9am-2pm. Students may present in either a poster or power-point format, but are encouraged to do an oral presentation. 
• The Abstracts deadline is 13 March 2012. These abstracts should not exceed 150 words. Abstracts can be submitted in any discipline of science, engineering and behavioral science. Student papers will be judged in each session and best paper awards will be given. There may be a registration fee (about $10.00 per attendee) to help defray costs; registration usually includes lunch for one person. 

• Pairs of students in Dr. Ogilvie's Biology Seminar course will present posters on a paper of their choice from the primary literature.   

Galapagos finches pictured on the 2007 cake:  Left: Tower (Genovesa) Is.  Sharp-beaked ground finch (female), Geospiza difficilis, on Opuntia flower. Middle: Cactus ground finch, Geospiza scandens, on Opuntia.  Right: Santa Cruz Is.  Small tree finch, Camarhynchus parvulus. Dr. Ross's Galapagos photos of finches

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England on February 12, 1809. 

Photos from the February 2012 Beta Beta Beta Induction are on the Tri Beta facebok page (and here)

Beta Beta Beta at CBU
beta beta beta is a national biology honor society for undergraduates.
"Beta Beta Beta (TriBeta) is a society for students, particularly undergraduates, dedicated to improving the understanding and appreciation of biological study and extending boundaries of human knowledge through scientific research."

Contact Dr. Eisen to sign up for the Caduceus email list. 

Here's a slide show covering some of the points Dr. Eisen will discuss at the meeting.

First Day of Spring Semester Classes

Check the updated room assignment for your courses:  online course schedule

• Many science labs do meet the first week of classes.  Check with your professor. 

• The final exam schedule for the fall term for day classes is available online. 
• Exams will be held in the room where the class normally meets unless a specific room is noted.
• First, look in the "Exam Groups" for your course number and section.  If you do not find a listing for your specific course, then look for the time your class met during the semester.  Exam dates are listed along the top row and Exam times are listed down the left column. 

6:30 pm in Montesi (Buckman, 2nd floor)

• We will eat, sing Christmas carols, and have a fun time. 
• New students are welcome.  You do not have to be an official member of tri-Beta or ACS to attend this party!

BOWLING FOR UGANDA: The annual Beta Beta Beta Bowl-a-thon for Uganda is Friday evening, 6:00 p.m at Billy Hardwick's Lanes.  The Bowl-a-Thon supports the Hope North Community in Uganda that shelters and educates Ugandans displaced by the war. 

• Sign up to play by turning in a team sign-up sheet to Dr. Mary Ogilvie  (CW113) mogilvie@cbu.edu by Monday, 14 Nov. 2011. The entrance fee per person is $15 with two sponsors and $20 each without sponsors, and covers the lane, bowling shoes, as well as pizza and drinks for each team.  If you plan on getting sponsors to help cover your entrance fee, a sponsor form is available.  Additional donations are always welcome. 
• Bowling teams should be 4 or 5 people (no more than 5 per team).  If you don't have a team but still want to participate, don't worry- email Dr. Ogilvie (mogilvie@cbu.edu) and we can assign you to a team. 
• Bring spouses, friends, and family members for a great time and a great cause.   This will be a fun evening, with raffle prizes and trophies at the end, and we hope to see you there! 

• Ending Poverty Through Enterprise:  Raising Funds for Hope North, an Internally Displaced People’s Camp in Uganda
• Hope North is a remote village in Uganda and is commonly referred to as a self-sustainable internally displaced people’s camp, created as the result of a civil war in Uganda. 

• 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.  Sabbatini Lounge, Thomas Center

• Arranged to help CBU students find out about graduate programs in health care.  At the annual Health Career Opportunities Fair representatives of health-related graduate programs will be available to answer your questions about their programs.  This event is anchored by the various schools of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, and we expect representatives from other regional universities.
• Representatives from many  programs will be on hand to answer questions.  The list of recruiters is here (The Caduceus eNewsletter)
• University of Tennessee Health Science Center - Memphis
• College of Allied Health Sciences (Cytology, Dental Hygiene, Health Info. Management, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy)
• College of Dentistry 
• College of Graduate Health Sciences 
• College of Medicine 
• College of Nursing 
• College of Pharmacy 
• Southern College of Optometry - Memphis  Ms. Sunni Ewing
• Lipscomb Univ. College of Pharmacy (Nashwille, TN) 
• Georgia Campus Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
• CBU Master's in Physician Assistant Studies
• Lincoln Memorial Univ. DeBusk School of Osteopathic Medicine

Academic survival as a science major

Study skills for Biol 111 Principles of Biology I and Lab

Your questions

Learning and Teaching Strategies
From personal experience and research comes advice on what works and why by Roald Hoffmann, Saundra Y. McGuire American Scientist Sept-Oct 2010
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/2010/5/learning-and-teaching-strategies/2

< begin quote >
 

It is now well established that active engagement in the process is imperative for learning to occur. When students take their own notes, they are engaged, in real time, and their minds focus on the task. For kinesthetic learners (those who learn best when moving, activating large or small muscles), the movement involved in taking notes facilitates learning.

The process of paraphrasing and rewriting the notes shortly after a lecture helps to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory. 
If the rewriting is delayed longer than 24 hours, much of the information needed to flesh out the notes taken in class will have disappeared from accessible memory. And it is so much better that gaps in understanding surface in the engaged rewriting of notes, rather than in the frantic cramming the night before an exam. Students need to be convinced that it is important to take the time to rewrite their notes, even if they felt they have understood the material the first time.

Missed classes provide the second learning strategy. If you must miss a class, rather than simply download the notes from a Web page, get the notes from a fellow student. This strategy is another way into group discussion and learning. 
It is important to develop relationships with other class members and to form study groups early in the course. During discussion of the class notes, much learning takes place. A typical scenario: Student A (the one who missed lecture and is borrowing the notes) says “I don’t understand this part of what you wrote,” to student B, the note taker. Because B is a fellow student, A is comfortable asking her the question, whereas A might be reluctant to ask it of the course instructor. B explains, and is thus engaged in the most salutary of learning actions, teaching. The only potential problems are that the note taker may not understand, or may propagate a misconception. Additionally, some people are just too shy to ask another human being.

A third strategy makes the best use of a course’s textbook. Most students do their homework in solitude (or as much of that as a residence hall room allows) by trying to follow text examples of similar problems. But often the text examples are not exploited for the learning opportunities they provide. First do the obvious; study the text and lecture information relevant to the problems. But then treat the examples in the text and in lecture notes as if they were homework problems¬ work out the example before looking at the answer, and compare your approach to the text’s, not just your answer. There are often several ways to do a problem, but try to understand the text’s method. If the homework answers provided do not include a way of working out each problem, the instructors should be encouraged (that’s putting it mildly) to provide complete solutions. The ability to work a problem without using a model is the essential skill tested by all exams (which is obvious to instructors, but not to most students). This approach to homework focuses on methods rather than final answers. Furthermore, exploring alternative methods will help you to learn to be an agile, flexible thinker.

Study groups are important in learning, but it seems to work best to alternate group work with individual effort. First, you should try to do a homework problem or prepare for an exam on your own. Then, the collective wisdom of a study group can be enlisted. Three to six fellow students who have each done their best to digest and absorb difficult material are powerful resources for each other. Social constructivist learning theorists have shown that meaningful learning results from small study groups with two crucial features: discussion and problem-solving activities. Several websites provide excellent tips on forming and running successful study groups. But finally, you must return to solving the problem set or facing the exam preparation on your own.

Not all instructors are comfortable with homework done in groups, but our experience is that groups are very effective. Do-it-yourself is the primary principle of active learning, though groups can help resolve the occasional blind spot. Some social dynamics may limit group value- for instance, passive personalities are likely to merely listen.

Groups can also be useful study aids if students make up practice quizzes and tests for each other, thereby thinking from the teacher’s perspective. One of us (Hoffmann) tells his students: “The only way you will get into my mind about the exam is… to try to get into my mind. That means to do what I do, and make up an exam.” 
Creating a practice exam involves not only selecting and organizing all the material (including choosing what is representative and what is important) but also discussing the exam in a group setting.

Another way to enter the tester’s mind is by teaching the material, one student to another. 
When one of us (McGuire) asks instructors attending faculty-development workshops when they began to develop a deep understanding of the conceptual structure of their discipline, most say that it did not happen until they began teaching. Helping a fellow student not only accelerates one’s learning but moves one past disappointment about not getting things right oneself. Usually, if you can help someone else get going, the gratification is motivating for both parties.

Finally, we encourage students to set attainable goals. If you are spinning your wheels and studying does not lead to learning, the process can share some symptoms with depression- feeling unable to act, for instance. For this reason, it is important to tackle small, achievable tasks.

In working problems and taking tests, move slowly, from simple problems to more complicated, integrative ones. Success, self-achieved, builds confidence, and so is a very powerful motivator. 
When you attempt to reach a goal that is within your grasp, a wonderful cycle of initial success, more effort, and additional success is put into motion.

It is important for students to realize that everyone learns differently; an attainable goal for one student may be trivial for another. It is most relevant to develop the learning skills necessary to perform more cognitively demanding tasks.

< end quote >

You can find the full article online at
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/2010/5/learning-and-teaching-strategies/2

CBU Biology Student Survival Tips CBU Counseling Center offers Study Skills Assistance Study Skills Links (from Indiana University) MCAT Test Prep Learning: Your First Job (by Dr. Robert Leamnson)   "A Modest Proposal to Students"  suggestions for classroom behavior, etc.   Successful Math and Science Study Skills: Math study skills Biology study skills; Biology reading skills Physics study skills Chemistry study skills

Tennesse HOPE scholarships  (lottery scholarships)  FAQ How to be a Student Study smarter Reading in the sciences Sleep on it!

The mock interviews will be similar to the interviews conducted when applying for a health career graduate program. 

Interviewwes include students interested in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, veterinarian, dental, and physician’s assistant. 

When: Wed., 5 October 2011

Where: Conference Room on the third floor of Cooper Wilson

Time: 6:00 pm.

Contact: Ashia Rallings at aralling@cbu.edu.

• Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors students who are applying or planning to apply to professional schools (e.g. Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Veterinary, Optometry, etc.), need to sign up ahead of time for a mock interview.  For more information, contact Ashia Rallings, Pre Health Chair Person of Tri-Beta (aralling@cbu.edu) or Dr. Ogilvie (mogilvie@cbu.edu).

CBU's chapter of Beta Beta Beta will match CBU student interviewees with medical professionals who will conduct one-on-one interviews.

Professionals from each field will be in attendance for the interviews.

• Photos from the Sept. 2006 Interview Workshop

Presentations: 9:00 am--noon in CW 105

• The Mid-South Coalition for Minority Health International Research Training (MHIRT) Projects Symposium and Wrap-up for Summer 2011 will be held Saturday, 24 September 9:00 a.m.-noon, in Cooper Wilson 105. 
• Students who participated in the 2011 projects will be presenting the results from their summer international research experiences in Uganda, Brazil, and Kenya. 
• The symposium is free and open to the public.  Breakfast and lunch will be served. 
• This is an excellent opportunity for individuals interested in the summer projects for 2012 to meet with students and learn more about the program, and how they can qualify for an all-expense paid research experience.
• If you plan to attend, RSVP to Julia Hanebrink at jhanebri@cbu.edu. To learn more, visit the MHIRT website .

The schedule for Sat., 24 Sept. 2011 is as follows:

8:30-9:00am BREAKFAST
9:00 Intro by Dr. Malinda Fitzgerald
9:15 Teair’e Charmichael & Chanel Perry: Psychophysiology of Human Color Vision: Color Contrast Sensitivity and Color Discrimination
9:30  Dominique Garcia Robles: Adregenic Receptor Analysis in Postnatal Day 1 Rats Cell Culture in Medulla Oblongata
9:45  Chloe Edinger & Bryauna Lewis:  Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Environmental Factors in High Incidence Areas Using a New Tool for Web Mapping Statistics
10:00 Jess Newman: The Seduction of Serotonin: Sexual vs Social Motivation by Estrus Cycle Stages
10:15 Anthone Moore: Identifying Biomarkers for the Presence of White Spot Syndrome Virus in Shrimp
10:30 COFFEE BREAK 
10:45 Crystal West Cross-Cultural Perspectives of Healthcare in Northern Uganda
11:00 Lacey Andrews: Alzheimer's Disease: A Look Inside the Aging Brain
11:15 Lakeya McGill: Food Motivation in Female Rats: The Effect of Antidepressant Medications
11:30 Anne-France Pierre: Forming the Brazilian Control Group for mfVEP Protocol
11:45 Siteiya Ntete: Community Education & Mobilization in Mlolongo, Kenya
12:00 LUNCH SERVED

• The Minority Health International Research Training grant to CBU supports undergraduate and graduate students who are selected to join summer research projects in Brazil and Uganda.  MHIRT is a paid internship.  All expenses relative to travel, room and board, preparation, and workshops are paid for and you receive a stipend.   The MHIRT application deadline is 16 Dec. 2011.
• See the MHIRT website and contact Dr. Fitzgerald (malinda@cbu.edu) or Dustin James (Dustin.James@cbu.edu) to find out about MHIRT paid research opportunities in Brazil, Kenya, Thailand, and Uganda for 2012!

Photos from the 2011 Meeting:

• Dr. Sandra Thompson-Jaeger will welcome the group and introduce the Biology Department Faculty.  We will discuss CBU's Biology Major, Biomedical Science Major, and Biology degree with an Environmental Science Concentration. 
• All students need to keep in touch with their academic advisor and should check their CBU email often. 
• Tri-Beta students will describe CBU's chapter of Beta Beta Beta and how new students can participate right away.  This National Biology Honor Society is also your Biology club at CBU.  The group will sponsor several activities open to all CBU students interested in Biology. The date for the first BBB meeting will be announced.  New students are welcome! 
• Dr. Malinda Fitzgerald will describe CBU Biology International Research and service opportunities availalbe through MHIRT.  Interested students are encouraged to attend the MHIRT Projects Symposium Saturday, 24 Sept. 2011 
• CBU Biology Student Research: Dr. Fitzgerald, Dr. Ogilvie, et al. 
• Dr. Eisen will discuss Pre-professional Health Care Careers advising.  Copies of this year's edition of the printed Health Careers booklet may be distributed during the meeting. Health Careers is also available online.  Contact Dr. Eisen to sign up for the Caduceus email list.  Here's a slide show covering some of the points Dr. Eisen will discuss at the meeting.
• The Health Career Opportunities Fair will be held Thursday, 3 Nov. 2011 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Sabbatini Lounge, Thomas Center.
• During the meeting we will see some Biology Dept. web pages.  There is an email listserv for all biology students.  If you are not receiving CBU Biology email (biology@lists.cbu.edu) messages, you are welcome to join the Biology listserv.  To be added to the list, email Dr. Ross, aross@cbu.edu. 

• Biology paradigms and Checksheets 
• CBU Online Course Schedule

Welcome Weekend 

• Chemistry Placement Exam Information:  The placement exam was given during summer advising.  The placement exam is required for those who wish to take Chem 113.  For those who missed the exam this summer, contact Dr. Merat (email dmerat@cbu.edu; phone 901-321-4201) 

• Many science labs do meet the first week of classes.  For example, all sections of BIOL 111L Principles of Biology I Lab will meet.  Additionally, all BIOL 111 "discussion" sections will meet as scheduled.  Many non-Freshman Biology labs will also meet the first week.  Check with your professor. 

• Haiti Medical Missions of Memphis (website hosted by the CBU Biology Department).
• Senior CBU Biology Majors may volunteer for a trip to Haiti during either Fall or Spring Break.  The number of expense paid openings is limited.  Contact Bro. Edward Salgado to apply.

• Life Science News from the New York Times 
• Human Genome special issue of Science (includes full text and illustrations)
• Science in the News from Sigma Xi 
• Scientific American 
• Sci/Tech News(The Christian Science Monitor)
• News from Journals, Meetings and Universities:
• NewsWise MedNews
• NewsWise LifeNews
• NewsWise SciNews
• Integrated Taxonomic Information System
• BioMed Central   Over 100 Open Access Journals 

covering all areas of Biology and Medicine
• Google scholar  search specifically for scholarly literature,  including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints,  abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research
• BiologyBrowser BIOSIS provides resources - such as the Nomenclature Glossary for Zoology, the Zoological Record Thesaurus, and more - for free on BiologyBrowser.

• Scirus.comweb search engine for science (search journals and web pages)
• The Scientist
• Science Daily Magazine
• New Scientist (UK)
• Health News (MSNBC)
• Science News (MSNBC)
• BioTech Resources
• BBC News Science/Nature
• World Science News (World-Science.net)

• Reference: http://www.bartleby.com/
• Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus (also hear pronunciations!)
• LabLit.com, a forum for all topics related to the culture of science in fiction and fact. 

Math study skills

Biology study skills; Biology reading skills

Physics study skills

Chemistry study skills

• Tri-Beta may be able to suggest a possible tutor for CBU students in the sciences. Contact Dr. Ogilvie for information.