MNS Registration Newsletter
Student working under a chemical hoodstudent using an oscilloscopeStudent demonstrating use of an HPLCStudents studying using anatomical models

Welcome to the Division of Math and Natural Science course offerings circular. This pamphlet is meant to assist you in registering for courses offered in the Summer and Fall sessions of 2008. You will find inside a detailed listing of our core elective courses, as well as breakdowns of our course offerings Your generic happy student picturein terms of the needs of the various majors which we serve, as well as charts outlining course prerequisites and requirements for minors offered in our division. Some career choices (for example pre-med or physical therapy) involve post-graduate education,and offer a multiplicity of entry paths. Students need to incorporate the undergraduate requirements of their prospective programs into their undergraduate course selections.

While each course may not be offered each semester, you can still use the descriptions for future planning.The registrar's list of course offerings is the final authority for the current availability of a listed course.

A Word About Labs

No portion of the science curriculum seems to come equipped with as much confusion as the topic of the laboratory. Regardless of career goals, the laboratory will enhance most students' learning, and, in most majors and postgraduate programs which require sciences, some lab experience is also required. Generally this lab experience is expected to augment 




required lecture sections.  For these reasons, both  practical and pedagogical, our labs, unless otherwise stated, are part of the course that they accompany.We have separated the credits for many of our labs from their parent course, but this has been done only for the convenience of students who, due to academic or personal difficulties, may have to retake the lecture or lab section. It does not represent a general statement about the pedagogical separability of lab from lecture.  

Unless explicitly stated, laboratory courses are expected to be taken concurrently with the courses to which they are affixed. The courses for which the laboratory is currently optional are PHY142 (Astronomy), CHE/BIO303 (Biochemistry), and
Students in physics labBIO215 (Environmental Sciences). Several other classes with no laboratories are also offered to accommodate students who have need for them, and we now offer a new lab course which can be taken without a lecture section (SCI131, Measurements Lab, which may be initially listed as SCI389, Special Topics Lab). 

Under no circumstances can a lab be taken prior to taking the course with which it is associated. One cannot, for example, take PHY112L in the Spring and then take PHY112 (the lecture) the following Fall. 

Special Note: If a student is interested in the PA program, but has not yet been admitted, it is suggested that they register for BIO303L.