My first semester of college I took Intro to Ecology and Evolution (BIOL251) with Dr. Leech. This class was designed to present evolutionary and ecological facts to the class while also having the students write one of their first ever lab reports and work in groups to design and execute a research project around those ideas.
The final project for the class was to create an oral presentation based off of the research the groups had been working on all semester. My group in particular decided to use survivorship curves to compare and contrast death rates between location, time periods, and sex. In this research project, my partners and I utilized many online databases of cemeteries in various locations. These databases had to include the sex of the person and their death date. Attached below is my final presentation for this class. From that presentation, you can see my group members and I relate scientific principles discussed in class to real-life ecological and evolutionary patterns in the world. Although this specific project helped me understand evolution and inheritance, the class helped me understand the other two major principles of biology, cell theory and homeostasis, through in-class discussions and study hours.
This class helped me gain a lot of experience which has helped me tremendously throughout my college career. I feel my work in Biogeography (BIOL 342) and Immunology (BIOL 404) were both only able to excel as much as they did because of the foundation I built in 251. In addition, I am currently working in a research lab with a major focus on epigenetics. Without 251, my understanding of evolutionary patterns in science would be minimal and would not have allowed me to participate in this research where I have since won awards based off of the content and my general understanding. When reflecting on this class, I am the most proud of how I handled taking my first biology course at Longwood despite all of the challenges it brought along with it. Before this class, I had never seen or heard of scientific articles and had never written a lab report. I remember feeling very discouraged at the very beginning of the semester when Dr. Leech was going over all of the assignments and I had no clue what was going on. Through the help of Dr. Leech, I was able to fully understand what should and should not go into a lab report and ultimately built lab skills that became very important in my research labs and in PRISM.
With this class, I was able to learn more about the fundamental principles of biology, read scientific journal articles, and learn how to write lab reports. With this knowledge, I can use them when studying in medical school and when I am a practicing oncologist. Although the field of medicine has its own criteria for success and what should be heavily focused on, I would like to research evolution more to understand more about the timeline of human evolution. I feel that this knowledge can help expand future medicine in a way like no other and will influence my job as a physician in the distant (but near) future.
Click here to view my final presentation for BIOL 251.
Click here to view one of my final lab reports for BIOL 251.
Click here to view my literature review for BIOL 342.