Friday, January 4, 2013

consider IB 109

Need a course?  Consider IB109, Insects and People, a course that satisfies the General Education Natural Science and Technology requirement. 

Why take it?  In the class, students can learn about locust plagues, silk and silkworms, honey and wax, praying mantis style kung fu, insect aphrodisiacs, lice, plague, sacred scarabs, zombie cockroaches, killer bees, and insects in art, law, music and movies, among other topics...

 For an extra hour of credit, take the lab--activities include honey-tasting, insect eating, field trips, beeswax candlemaking, cochineal tie-dyeing and CSI-style maggot hunts...

The instructor for this course has won a few teaching awards--the 2006 Entomological Society of America Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2010 LAS Distinguished Teaching Award, and was also the nominal inspiration for "Dr. Bambi Berenbaum" of the X-Files episode "War of the Coprophages" (about alien killer cockroaches).