BIOL 4960R Student Agreement

Course Description

This course is 4 credit hours and affords undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in laboratory research under the direction of a faculty member at the University of Georgia. Students registered for this course may not receive payment for research unless they have earned a fellowship stipend.

Biology majors may use this course to satisfy either their Major Laboratory requirement or one of their Major Elective requirements. Please note that only the first semester of the course (4960R) will count towards the completion of Biology major requirements and that any additional semesters (i.e. BIOL 4970R/4980R) will NOT count towards the major but rather as a General Elective. Any BIOL R-suffix courses will count towards UGA’s Experiential Learning requirement. All R-suffix courses will also count as Honors courses for Honors students.

If you perform research for multiple semesters in the same laboratory, you will register for BIOL 4960R, 4970R, and 4980R, respectively. If you perform in DIFFERENT laboratories each semester, you will register for BIOL 4960R each time.

Course Requirements

1. Research must be biological in nature (have a clear biological basis) for a research proposal to be approved. Areas which may qualify include (not limited to): cellular biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, plant biology, microbiology, marine biology, entomology, genetics, bioinformatics, biomedical, bioengineering and biology education. Dr. Kristen Miller, Director of the Division of Biological Sciences, will review and approve all proposals. BIOL 4960R is not a literature review course; the student must be directly involved in a research project.

2. A completed "BIOL 4960R Student Agreement" and "BIOL 4960R Faculty Agreement" must be submitted through this form by 5:00pm on the last business day before classes begin each semester. The BIOL 4960R Faculty Agreement will be sent automatically to your Faculty Mentor upon your submission of this form.

3. Once the agreement forms have been signed and approved, the student will be emailed a section number (CRN) to register for the course. Students will be automatically enrolled in the eLC course "BIOL49X0R Faculty Mentored Undergraduate Research."

4. Students must complete at least 12 hours of work per week (i.e. conducting background research, reading/writing manuscripts and reports, and conducting experiments in the laboratory) for a minimum of 180 hours per semester.

5. Students are required to submit a research paper to receive course credit by Reading Day. Papers should be submitted to the appropriate assignment drop box in their eLC course. The Biology undergraduate degree program requires a paper even if the Faculty Mentor does not. Students who do not submit a paper will receive a grade of Incomplete (I). See these guidelines for details on the final paper. All papers will be fully reviewed and returned to students if revisions are needed.

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