This interactive course combines academic inquiry and community engagement to investigate the theme of diversity and climate within STEM fields. We will begin by examining the ways in which cultural norms, hierarchies, and practices within the STEM disciplines shape our experiences in the field and lab and the ways in which our diverse identities, commitments, and histories shape how we engage with STEM. How are others--and how are we--challenging and changing STEM disciplines, cultures, and practices and fostering abilities to be fully human in STEM?

In this course, we will take a leap back in time to the origins of life, discuss the evolution of major organismal lineages, and investigate biology processes at different scales, from cellular to ecological. Through the lectures, labs, and in-class discussions, students will be able to explain how scientific knowledge is generated.

Developmental biology is a topic full of fantastic questions: how does a single egg transform into an organism with many cells and tissue types? What controls gene expression? What is the interplay between environmental signal and plant hormones? In this course plant and animal development will be studied at the level of genes, cells and tissues, in model organisms such as sea urchins, ferns, chicks and lilies. The laboratory is at the heart of the course, and classwork is designed around the live material students will meet each week.