Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Hello! My name is Keri, and I’m teaching this section of BI112. It’s a bit early for all the details, but some general course information is provided below. Hopefully this will be helpful as you figure out your winter class schedule. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me keri.mesirow@pcc.edu

BI112 is designed to prepare you for your future coursework by building a foundation of biological concepts and vocabulary. These are biology basics that you will be expected to know before taking any other biology courses.  If you take this course, you will learn the essentials of cell biology- the chemistry of cells, cell structure and function, how cells harness and utilize energy, and how they divide and pass on hereditary information.

Attendance, Class Meetings, and Workload

This section of BI112 is a "traditional" format course, or in-person. All our meetings are in person and on campus. You will need to use D2L, however, to access some course materials, to take online quizzes, and to turn in certain assignments.

Lecture is every Tuesday and Thursday from 1pm- 2:50pm, and lab is every Tuesday from 3pm- 5:50pm. Attendance for both lecture and lab are required, and you must be on time.

For a 5-credit science class, you should plan to spend about 20 hours a week at home reading, doing post-lab assignments, studying for lab quizzes and lecture exams, etc. Be prepared to eat, sleep, breath cell biology (you should be studying cell bio a bit every day). This course covers a lot of material in a short period of time- 13 chapters in 11 weeks.

Please do not overload your schedule. Do not take more than 12- 15 credits at a time. 

Grading Structure

The course is worth a total of 1000 points, 700 points from lecture and 300 from lab.

lecture:

150pts:   assignments, discussions, quizzes

350pts:   midterm exams

200pts:   final exam                                                                                                                                                            

lab:                                                                                                                                                                                 

120pts:   lab quizzes

108pts:   post-lab assignments

50pts:     microscope assignments    

12pts:     graphing homework assignment

10pts:     microscope skills practical                                                                   

1000pts TOTAL

Course Materials

Textbook: We use Campbell Biology in Focus 3rd edition. You can use the 2nd edition or the global/international edition of Biology in Focus, if you prefer.

Lab Manual: Briggs, N., Cawley, K., Brown-Istvan, L., Fergusson-Kolmes, L., Neps, S., Schaerer, B., Galante, L., and Simon, B.  (2018).  Cell biology for the health sciences lab manual (Fall 2019).  Portland, OR: PCC Print Center. You must have the lab manual on the first day. Make sure you get the lab manual from the Rock Creek bookstore; the manual sold on the other campuses is not exactly the same as ours.

Scantrons: You will need 4 scantron sheets (882-E which have 50 questions per side). These are available at the bookstore.