Last Updated: 9/05/07 Site Information
	Course Information
	A.  Course Structure The course meets on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in 145 Birge Hall.  Demonstration labs in 101 Birge Hall are open for a total of 15 hours per week.   The lab is open 12-3 Wednesday, 10-4 Thursday, 10-4 Friday. Come anytime, for there is no beginning or end time in particular.  You should plan to spend about 1 hour in the lab per week.  There will be no formal presentation or lecture in the lab, but TAs or professor will be available for consultation.  Even given the easy-going format there is plenty of room for you to put a lot of effort into the course, and as with most other courses, you get out proportionally what you put in.  There are exams at regular times and a SEMESTER PROJECT IS ALSO REQUIRED.  This can be a term paper or an alternative project (see Section IV: Semester Projects). B.  The distasteful matter of grades Faced with a requirement to grade in this course, I have the choice of giving mock grades (and possibly getting fired), or devising a relatively fair grading scheme.  I choose the latter.  (My feeling is that often grading is taken lightly, but grades are later taken very seriously.)  I do not deny that the consequences of grades are serious, but I do argue that grades themselves have very little intrinsic meaning beyond a percent that you happened to get on a particular examination.  I feel they are powerful forces for the destruction of academic endeavor with which we must for the time being live.  (The taxpayers think they are good and the public does foot the bill--if you don't like it, quit, and find a free university.)  I hope that grades impinge little on the course.  We will try very hard to be fair, so please let us get on with it. I am happy to extend my office hours to coach the interested. However, I think that cramming for an exam is no way to learn things that should be helpful for years to come.  Keep up all the time and we will help.  There are no review sessions because they encourage bad study habits.  I am UNSYMPATHETIC TO FACES THAT I SEE FOR THE FIRST TIME JUST BEFORE EXAMINATIONS.  I do not see anyone outside office hours the week before examinations and neither do my TAs unless we have been seeing you before then.  All this means is, if you are here to learn, we are here to help, but we won't do your work for you. READ THE NEXT FEW PARAGRAPHS CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU ASK ME HOW GRADES ARE MADE.  Grades are based on the following:  1) 1st Midterm exam, 2) 2nd Midterm exam, 3) final exam, 4) a paper or project; 1-4 ARE REQUIRED.   There are optional EXTRAS, which are not substitutes, but may help your grade.  These are 5) an optional oral examination, which may be taken anytime between the 2nd Midterm examination and the last day of class, and 6) an optional take-home. The overall course grade is based on 35% for the best grade, 25% for the next two grades, 15% for the next lowest and 0% for the rest (you only get the 0% weight if you have more than four grades because of options.)  HOWEVER, THE PAPER/PROJECT AND OPTIONAL TAKE-HOME CANNOT COUNT AS THE GREATEST PORTION OF THE GRADE.  THE OPTIONAL ORAL (IF TAKEN) AND THE FINAL MUST COUNT AT LEAST AS HIGH AS THE GRADE WEIGHTED IN THE MIDDLE.  IF YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT YOUR LOW GRADES, USE ALL OPTIONS; IT PAYS.  There are additional complications if you elect to do a special project in lieu of a term paper, but these are explained in Section IV. of this syllabus. C.  Taking the course for Honors credit In the Professor's view, honors should indicate higher standards, not more work.  Therefore there is a requirement for honors, but it involves no extra work per se.  So here is the deal.  There is an optional oral exam for people who need to replace a low grade.  The only requirement for honors credit is that the oral exam is required, not optional.  While the optional oral can be taken with either a TA or the Professor, the required honors oral must be with the Professor.  Those taking honors orals have up to the last day of class to make the appointment for the oral (a week after the optional oral deadline), but the earlier the better, after week 12. Perhaps the standards on the honor oral are a shade higher, but not much.  The point of the honors oral is that the Professor gets to see face to face that you deserve the honors credit.  I really can see how much someone is on top of the ideas and the material from an oral exam.  In general, on the oral exam, people do as well as, or better than they do on the final, so do not panic.  Apart from it being required, the honors oral works exactly the same as the optional version for regular credit.  It must count at least as high as the middle grades.  It takes half an hour, and allows me to give hints or rephrase questions, so it is a much fairer reflection of your abilities than the other exam formats.  If you get tongue-tied because you are nervous, I take it into account, and so being tense or less than poised costs you nothing on the grade.  D.  The Exams Below you will be given all the prior information that you're going to get as to the structure of examinations so please don't come asking because I shut up like a clam, and your face becomes an unpleasant memory for me.  I consider it unfair play to ask questions about the format or the substance of an exam, except when I ask for them in front of the whole class.  My advice, in general terms, is to get on top of the course; that way the particular mode of examination becomes irrelevant.  Facts industriously learned are quickly forgotten.  I am, therefore, trying to test your ability to synthesize and use what you have idly or joyfully imbibed during the course, rather than testing your crammed information.  An "A" for the course will often be a triumph of native intelligence more than busy, busy, industry.  Not that I am against industry; in fact, the more industrious you are the better, but I can make no promise that blind hard work will get you a desired grade.  THERE ARE NO MAKE UP EXAMS.  YOU MUST BE THERE.  NO EXCUSES. 1.  1st Midterm Exam.  The exam are multiple choice questions and machine graded.  There will be two 1-page essays for the ILS course.  You should have finished reading the Ahl & Allen text (ILS ONLY) and Diamond’s Sex book by this exam.  The parts of the duplicated readings that refer to the lectures up to the exam are also required.  See the Table of Contents in reader. 2.  2nd Midterm Exam.  It covers primarily material after the first examination, although you may be expected to relate some of the early work to the later section.  The parts of duplicated readings that refer to the lectures up to the exam are required.  You should have read Fernandez-Armesto,  Diamond’s Gun and Tainter (ILS ONLY) read completely by this time.  The exam has a multiple choice format similar to the 1st Midterm exam.  There will be one or two 1-page essays for the ILS course.   3.  Final Exam.  The final is comprehensive over the whole course, although there is an emphasis on the last section of the course.  Read the rest of the duplicated articles.  Same format as 1st and 2nd Midterms.  No early final--it is given on the date in the timetable.  An incomplete only occurs for special cases and makeup exams may well be delayed until after semester break.  I have denied a late exam for a brothers' wedding.  Use that as a measure of how desperate things have to be for a late final.  Basically a conflicting University responsibility, or you being very ill are the only valid reasons.  When I took my finals we had six hours of exams every day for two weeks, therefore, the recommendation of the Dean that three exams in a 24 hour period warrants a postponement is by no means automatic for this final.  A straight clash is something else. 4.  Optional Oral Exam.  This can be taken anytime after the 12 weeks until the final.  I or my TA will ask particular questions.  If there is ambiguity in our question, then we ask it again in a different form.  If you still can't answer, we give clues or modify the substance of the question.  We find holes in your knowledge and understanding, but also we try to bring out the best of your knowledge.  It takes about a half an hour.  Two of us may be in the room asking questions, although usually there is only one.  If you take this exam, it must count at least the middle grade in calculation of course grades, i.e. it can hurt your grade. 5.  Optional Take-Home Exam.  It is given as one question to be answered in a seven day period.  It is usually general and relates to a whole section of the class.  A recent take-home was, "How do the readings support and detract from the approach to the origins of agriculture used in lecture?"  THE TIME OF THE TAKE-HOME CANNOT BE CHANGED FOR ANY REASON SINCE IT IS AN OPTION. This exam cannot hurt your grade. E.  Required Readings There are five books for ILS and three for Botany and a reader that is required texts for both courses. The reader is available from Bob's Copy Shop at 1401 University, across from Engineering Hall.  The texts are available from the University Bookstore. 1.  The Reader. The Reader is a set of articles and other material that I have put together to help you get the most out of this course.  The table of contents in the Reader has headings that group successive articles together.  These headings are verbatim the titles of the lectures in Section II.B.: ILS 252 Lecture and Lab Schedule of this syllabus. 2.  Texts. Ahl, Valerie and T.F.H. Allen.  1996.  Hierarchy Theory:  A Vision, Vocabulary and Epistemology. Columbia University Press.  New York City.  206 pp. (ILS ONLY) Diamond, Jared.  1997.  Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company.     New York City. 480 pp. (BOTANY AND ILS) Diamond, Jared.  1997.  Why is Sex Fun?  The Evolution of Human Sexuality.  Basic Books.  New York City.  165 pp.  (BOTANY AND ILS) Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. 2004. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. Free Press. New York City. 258 pp. (BOTANY AND ILS) Tainter, Joseph A.  1988.  The Collapse of Complex Societies.  Cambridge University Press.  New York City.  250 pp. (ILS ONLY)