GS students are invited to learn more about two Summer 2025 courses, Foundations of Science and Foundations of Biology, both of which can help satisfy Core requirements.
Instructor: Klejda Bega
Summer Session: A
Course Date and Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Call Number: 11322
Points: 4
Note: This course has field trips on Fridays, June 6, June 13, and June 27, from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. There will also be weekly outings during the scheduled seminar times.
Using modern, student-centered, active and collaborative learning techniques, students will engage—through field observations, in-class experiments, computer simulations, and selected readings—with a range of ideas and techniques designed to integrate and anchor scientific habits of mind. Throughout the term, all students will satisfy a detailed set of rubrics by documenting their learning in reflection postings designed to serve as a future reference for how they, individually, went from not understanding an idea to understanding it.
Topics covered will include statistics, basic probability, a variety of calculational skills, graph reading, and estimation—all aimed at elucidating such concepts as energy, matter, cells, and genes in the context of astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth science, neuroscience, and physics.
Instructor: Mary Ann Price
Summer Session: B
Course Date and Time: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 2:30 - 4 p.m.
Call Number: 10199
Points: 2
Prerequisites: General Chemistry I (or equivalent), General Chemistry II is a pre/co-requisite
In this course, taught by Mary Ann Price, students will learn basic terminology, important concepts, and basic problem-solving skills to prepare biology and pre-health students for the challenging Biology courses at Columbia. The course will do a deep dive into a small number of topics and use these as access points to teaching skills that will aid students in future STEM courses. Classes will include time for problem solving. Recitations will involve problem solving and student presentations of solutions to problems.
