The concept of evolution is central to biology, certainly as practiced in
the Department of Biology at Indiana University. Nonetheless, it remains
true that even the word "evolution" elicits a strong and negative response
from many people who reject the concept-or at least what they have been told
is the concept- of evolution. It shall be an essential purpose of this
course to present for discussion and evaluation the actual principles of the
theory of evolution. These were stated explicitly by Charles Darwin more
than a century ago and this summary remains valid in 1998.

Students will be asked to evaluate these principles in discussions and in
writing. Every student in this course has lived about two decades, which is
longer than most organisms on this planet live. Two decades of life provide
an immense amount of experience. Students will be challenged to consider
principles of evolution and to attempt to confirm or to falsify these within
the limits of proper scientific inquiry. ARGUMENTS ABOUT POLITICS, RELIGION
OR SOCIAL POLICY WILL NOT BE TOLERATED SINCE THEY CAN NOT BE EVALUATED BY
THE METHODS AVAILABLE TO AND APPROPRIATE FOR SCIENCE. It should also be
noted that no attempt will be made to challenge or change the religious
perspective of any student. (And I insist that no student attempt to change
mine.)

There will be brief written assignments each week, due in discussion section
meetings, and evaluated by AIs and UTIs with guidance from Professor Hudock.
There will be three one-hour exams during the semester and a CUMULATIVE
final exam. The hour exams will include objective questions and questions
that require an essay response. Each hour exam and the final exam will be
worth 100 points. The lowest hour exam score will be dropped for each
student in determining the course score. All students will be required to
complete the final exam and the score on this exam will be included in the
final score of each student.

GRADES: It is imperative that students understand that there is NO CURVE. In
this course, as in all my courses, grading practices are defined
quantitatively. Moreover, ALL student will have the same requirements and
all will be evaluated in exactly the same way. NO ONE will be given any
opportunity to "do extra work to improve my grade".

In too many courses, grades become a Zero Sum Game. (For each winner, there
is a loser. For each (A) there is an (F)). In this course, the game is NON
ZERO SUM. One possible effect of this is that cooperative learning is
encouraged since a student does not jeopardize a personal grade by helping
another student understand an idea. Grades will be assigned according to the
following absolute scale (which will be further subdivided to accommodate
(+/-) grading):

Score           Grade
90 - 100         A
80 - 89.99      B
65 - 79.99      C
50 - 64.99      D
Below 50       F