Natural Science 0120 - Healing: Western and Alternative Medicine

This course is designed to introduce students to complementary and alternative concepts in healing. Students will work in teams of 3-4 to investigate an area of interest in the health sciences. The groups will make extensive use of the primary scientific and medical literature in an effort to understand the use, effectiveness and limitations of the particular treatments or approaches selected. Each team member is responsible for some aspect of the research and reports back to the whole group. The groups will present their findings to the whole class. The students' goal was to assess the effectiveness of the various therapies by examining the available data carefully, explaining the methodologies employed to examine the treatment and critically reading the authors' conclusions. Examples of past projects include acupuncture and pain, acupuncture and osteoarthritis, yoga in stress reduction, herbal remedies for allergies, art therapy in PTSD, and the use of music therapy in chronic stress. Each student will have the opportunity to work in two different groups over the semester and to complete two projects and presentations. Students will also write biweekly critiques of papers from the primary literature and revise these based on the instructor's comments. The second revision was done using peer editing and the final compilation of the three critiques will be used in putting together their final papers. All students will also be introduced to elementary aspects of data analysis and statistics and some basic immunology. We also will have presentations in message therapy and acupuncture by local practitioners. A final portfolio of all work will be used to evaluate the students progress.

Physical and Biological Sciences Independent Work Quantitative Skills Students are generally expected to spend at least 6-8 hours per week on preparation and work outside of class time.