Students will be able to evaluate and interpret data in scientific literature and other sources.

Within all of my biology courses, there has been a strong emphasis on interpreting scientific literature. Many of my introductory courses, including Integrative Biology (BIOL 120), would have us complete some kind of article review or reflection (BIOL 120 Article 4 Reflection). This really helped me be able to interpret literature from all different kinds of topics within the field of biology and eventually beyond as well. We began by trying to understand these research papers and slowly moved on to be able to critique what makes a good or bad article (as shown in the last question of the article review above).

After building a solid foundation in interpreting scientific literature, I further refined this skill in Sophomore Seminar (BIOL 288). In this class, we located reliable sources of information in order to conduct a literature review on a chosen topic (BIOL 288 Literature Review). In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to look at the use of medical technologies throughout four major pandemics. For my first literature review, it helped me better understand articles to where I could summarize and explain the important findings to others.

In my Senior Capstone course (BIOL 488), we were instructed to find a paper related to the organismal aspect of COVID-19. Once we read it in-depth, we were to critique the paper and explain not only the findings described in the article, but also pitfalls or misleading information (BIOL 488 Research Paper Critique). Since I had gotten a better understanding of biological sciences throughout the biology program courses, I was able to understand the concepts found in these articles much better. This assignment allowed me to focus more on helpful criticisms discovered throughout the article, which I believe allowed me to improve in my literature reviews and interpretations, as well as my own scientific writings