Many non-STEM major students choose to take GEL 012 as a GE for science and engineering credit

Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, Iguanodon, Brachiosaurus, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus — all names of dinosaurs that students learn about in GEL 12: Dinosaurs. The two-unit class grants students science and engineering general education credit, making it a popular choice for non-STEM majors.

According to Sandy Carlson, a professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences who teaches GEL 12 every Winter Quarter, the class aims to introduce lower division students to a variety of different concepts in evolution and paleobiology, using dinosaurs as examples. The class is especially geared toward students without a strong science background.

“I took [GEL 12] because everyone at a young age loves dinosaurs and goes through that phase,” said first-year English major Cami Nembach. “And with the ‘Jurassic Park’ movies, you just have a soft place in your heart for dinosaurs.”

The class meets twice a week for a 50-minute lecture. According to Nembach, each lecture starts off with the professor showing the class a current event article involving dinosaurs. New information is always being discovered about dinosaurs, and the professor makes connections between these events to the theme of the class that day. Then she moves on through the rest of the lecture.

Usually every quarter, the class is almost full with around 250 students. The class was first taught around 27 years ago and has changed from being offered once a year to being offered every quarter due to the high demand, according to Carlson.

Carlson says one goal of the class is to gain a better understanding of past worlds and extinct animals. Understanding this will help students better appreciate the world they live in today and have a deeper understanding of how science, the scientific method and hypothesis testing work.

“You see [dinosaur] characteristics in animals that are around today,” Nembach said. “It’s crazy to wrap your head around these animals that were so much bigger than us.”

A goal of the class is for students to be able to understand and be critical of scientific reports. This is often a new concept for those who are non-STEM majors.

“The scientific reports that you see are sometimes exaggerated or misleading in some ways,” Carlson said. “And developing the critical skills to detect what’s false, I think that’s really important as well. I think in college, it’s appropriate to start questioning.”

The workload of the class mostly involves studying for the midterm and the final exam since there is no homework. Reading from the textbook is recommended but optional, according to Carlson.

“We set it up so it would not be hugely burdensome,” Carlson said. “I think it’s really important for people to come to class, so I think that’s part of the workload. There’s a textbook that’s recommended but not required, but I think it’s good for a lower division class to have some kind of backup for people, especially for people who are not science majors.”

Carlson believes that the course is so popular because it is fun, and people in general are interested in dinosaurs.  

“I think the whole dinosaur-bird connection is really compelling because it makes people think about the nature of evolution and how we live with birds today and they are related to these many large, terrestrial dinosaurs,” Carlson said. “Terrestrial dinosaurs are extinct, so it just makes people wonder about them. So what we try to do in the class is to try to put that wonder into a scientific class, to set up hypotheses and test them.”

According to Nembach, she likes GEL 12 because it is a relaxing class and the professor is very animated and involved.

“She’s really into the topic so it helps the students get more interested in the subject,” Nembach said. “If we know that she loves it, I’m having a fun time.”

Carlson attested to her love for this class.

“Here, the subject matter is also so much fun that it really does make it fun to teach,” Carlson said.

First-year cellular biology major Kacey Zimmerman said that she took the class not for Science and Engineering GE credit, since she is a science major, but because she wanted to have a little more units than just her main classes. In addition to her really difficult STEM classes, she wanted one interesting, easy and fun class.

“There’s not a lot of outside work, which I think is a good thing for a GE because for me personally, even though [GEL 12] does not give me GE credit, when I’m taking a GE class, I want to learn new things that aren’t really included in what I would learn about and I want to spend most of my energy on classes that do pertain to my major,” Zimmerman said.

According to Nembach, she recommends the class to students who like dinosaurs, even if they are not very involved in science. Zimmerman shared her sentiments.

“I would recommend it even if you aren’t very sciencey,’” Zimmerman said. “It’s pretty easy to go in and get this information. You don’t really need much background knowledge.”

Written By: MARGO ROSENBAUM — features@theaggie.org

Students discuss their thoughts on pass times

It’s week eight of Winter Quarter. Your pass time is at 6:30 a.m., and two days before this brief appointment there is only one spot available in the lecture you know you need. White-knuckling your phone with three tabs open to Schedule Builder, you try to sleep.

Scheduling and registering for courses for the upcoming quarter can be a source of stress for students, particularly those who worry about their pass times and not getting the courses they want. For undergraduate students, course registration is done via Schedule Builder, an online portal.

Students are given two pass appointments, which are the beginning of four-hour windows during which students can register for classes. Many students, however, believe that they are only thirty minutes long due to the way they are advertised.

Claire Lu, a fourth-year psychology and statistics double major, works in the Tercero Academic Advising Center as a peer advisor for the College of Letters and Science. She advises students on a broad range of academic topics including schedule planning and course registration.

“[Students ask] and also parents come to our office and ask, ‘Hey, my kid has a really late pass time and other people, like his roommate, have an earlier pass time than my kid. Why is that?’” Lu said.

When students or parents ask her questions about pass times, she generally refers them to the Office of the University Registrar because they know more than the peer advisors. Lu says that people don’t really ask her and the other peer advisors too many questions about pass times, mostly because they can’t be changed.

While some students like first-year psychology major Brandon Law utilize online tools such as MyDegree when trying to figure out quarterly coursework, some students like first-year psychology major Kelly Huang try to plan out four years worth of classes and go from there.

“It makes it easy to be flexible and to imagine how your year will end up looking like,” Huang said. “Like in case I get waitlisted or classes become unavailable.”

Huang says that to some extent, “it’s too irritating of a topic to even bother with” since students have no control over their pass time. Meanwhile, Law, who didn’t know exactly how pass times worked, considers that a good thing, because there’s no way to really change pass time (other than by the units taken). To him, that means pass times don’t contribute to a competitive environment at school.

Law once missed his pass time because he overslept and described the “intense anxiety” he attributed to the course registration process. Huang started a quarter later than most freshmen students and said that it was frustrating to not get certain classes that are required for her major. Because she started later, she didn’t attend orientation and was left to figure out scheduling on her own. However, she makes sure to reach out to get advice when she needs help.

“[I go to] academic advisors or the psychology department,” Huang said. “[Or] my high school teachers or past instructors, especially since they already have master’s degrees. I never trust asking just one advisor.”

According to the Office of the University Registrar’s website, “the two-pass registration system ensures that all students have access to the courses that are most critical to their curricula and attain full-time status and that access to registration is distributed fairly throughout the student body.”

Until their first Spring Quarter, newly admitted freshmen are assigned zero units and newly admitted transfer students are assigned 90 units. Pass times are based on priority groups — which are established according to UC Davis units, excluding the current term, transfer units, and units from exams.

There are two assigned pass appointments, each followed by open registration. Students can only add themselves to waitlists for classes during the second pass. After the first two passes and their respective open registrations, a registration freeze begins on the the day the student fee payment is due, and no students can register for classes. Students who have paid fees are registered, and those who haven’t are dropped.

According to associate registrar Patti Flynn, there are certain groups that receive priority registration.

“The following should cover most (if not all) of the groups currently receiving priority registration: Regents Scholarship recipients, University Honors Program (UHP) participants, student athletes, students identified by Student Disability Center, students who are veterans, foster youth students, Special Transitional Enrichment Program (STEP) students, resident advisors, TRiO Scholar recipients and Chem/Math Science Honors students,” Flynn said via email.

All three of the residence areas —  Segundo, Tercero and Cuarto — offer academic advising centers with peer advisors and tutoring. Each of the colleges at UC Davis offers academic advising. Students can enroll in up to 17 units during Pass One, 19 units during Pass Two and 28.5 units during the schedule adjustment period after the registration freeze. However, that might be a lot to take on for any student.

Written by: Anjini Venugopal — features@theaggie.org

The Internship and Career Center hosts its quarterly fair

Hundreds of students packed into the ARC Pavilion on Wednesday, Feb. 27 to attend the Internship and Career Center’s 5th annual fair. Rows upon rows of companies filled the bottom floor of the Pavilion, with employers ready to talk to eager UC Davis students, primed and prepared to get summer internships and future jobs.

Events and Career Recruiting Program Assistant and Event Coordinator for the Internship and Career Center (ICC) Kathy Santana felt that the fair is a good opportunity for all students to gain valuable information on how to get jobs.

“I think it is a great opportunity for students to practice looking for jobs, talking to employers, all the stuff they are gonna wanna do when they graduate,” Santana said. “You know it is across the board, a lot of younger students come here to see what is going on and to practice their interviewing skills, but certainly a lot of seniors, majors across the board, a lot of engineers, a lot of business.”

Fourth-year genetics and genomics major Kirun Chohan had done her research on the companies she stood in line for and came prepared with 10 copies of her resume for prospective employers. She also attended two workshops on preparing for the fair and constructing an effective resume, put on by the ICC.

“Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., is a technology company for biological science products like PCR, a lot of science products,” Chohan said. “This company [is a company I am interested in] probably because they have so many different products that I have used before, they might have something I can help with, I just want to get research and lab experience. I have talked to other employers.”

Just being at the fair is a great experience even if employers don’t have any jobs or internships at the ready because the connections made are invaluable.

“They are pretty helpful even if they don’t have anything, they still give you information if later on if they have something eventually,” Chohan said.

Third-year economics major Akshara Nair appreciated the fair because it is a good platform to personally interact with employers.

“It is more like a face-to-face platform, rather than just applying online and hoping you’ll get it, here you can talk to them and understand more about the role and the position,” Nair said. “It is really important for the student, actually, you get to know more about the role itself and get to decide then and there if you are going to be a perfect fit or not.”

Employers also have something to gain by this experience that the fair provides. Target representative Gabriella Serrato agreed with this statement.

“I think it is really beneficial and it is nice for us to get a better understanding of what students are looking for and for us to kind of explain what our positions entail, because we can only put so much on a postcard or on a website, so it is beneficial for us to express why we love Target so much.” Serrato said.

Even students who are critical of the fair acknowledge its overall value such as fourth-year chemical engineering major Joel Tinseth.

“[The fair is] more of a supplemental thing I found, I can’t imagine putting all of my chances in this event, but it definitely helps,” Tinseth said.

To find more information about summer internships or potential job opportunities be sure to check out the ICC’s website on future workshops and personal advising sessions.  Because like Joel Tinseth most of us “want a career.”

The ICC hosts career fairs quarterly, so for those who missed out on Winter Quarter’s installment, there are more opportunities to catch employers on April 17 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Pavilion.

Written by: Isabella Beristain — features@theaggie.org