Course Description and Goals:

 

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar examines the role of climate in shaping energy, ecology, and community in Kansas from geoscience, bioscience, social science, and engineering perspectives. The class will combine lectures, classroom discussion, a group project, and field research in order to understand the ways that climate change and energy production are reshaping the human and natural systems in Kansas and the Great Plains. Students will design a project that combines issues of climate, energy, and community and will use a variety of interdisciplinary tools to complete their project.

 

Course Objectives:

 

• To appreciate the public health significance and engineering utility of microorganisms.

 

• To learn the terminology of microbiology such that you can communicate about biological systems using basic principles.

 

• To learn basic literature review and laboratory skills such that microbiological data can be interpreted with skill.

 

• To list the nutritional needs of microorganisms and describe how organisms process carbon and generate energy.

 

• To apply basic principles of microbiology to solve environmental problems or to optimize a biotechnical application of microorganisms.