An Independent Study provides an excellent opportunity to gain
a more intimate understanding of how biological knowledge is actually
discovered. For those of you who are considering a career in research,
an Independent Study provides a useful opportunity to see what
it's like to be involved in research. Fortunately, Penn provides
an abundance of opportunities for Independent Study for our undergraduate
biology majors. Typically, we recommend
that you seek an Independent Study in your Junior or Senior year,
after you have had enough course work to provide a good background
for understanding a research project.
Some students are able to arrange an Independent Study with a
faculty member they've met in a course or Work Study position.
If neither of these options is possible for you, the Department
of Biology Academic Office has descriptions of each Biology Professor's
research interests and a listing
of research opportunities in other departments, including the
Medical School. Both are
available to help you find an Independent Study sponsor.
An Independent study may be taken as a College 099 or a BIOL
399, but only a BIOL 399 can be counted towards the major. Each
BIOL 399 requires a sponsor who is a faculty member in the Department
of Biology and whose responsibility it is to monitor closely the
progress of the course and to grade the course work on the strength
of a final written report. This report shall have the same format
as an article to be published in a scientific journal.
The faculty sponsor often supervises the course work directly.
In other cases the supervision of the course work may be delegated
by the sponsor to a faculty member in another Penn Department,
who is either known personally to the faculty sponsor, or whose
research interests are very similar to those of the faculty sponsor.
A faculty member who has accepted the sponsorship of a BIOL 399
project has committed himself/herself to monitor and to later
evaluate and grade the final report. If he/she does not have the
immediate competence or time, he/she will decline the sponsorship.
If a faculty member wants to accept more than 5 students for BIOL
399 supervision in any given semester, he/she must seek endorsement
by the Biology Curriculum Committee. If a student cannot find
a sponsor within the Biology Department, the student should apply
at CAS for a College 99.
Permission to take BIOL 399 must always be obtained beforehand.
Course section numbers are only issued after completion of the
"pink form" which can be obtained at the Department
of Biology Academic Office,
Room 102, Leidy Labs.
Once a student has completed a BIOL 399, he or she is eligible
to take BIOL 499 Advanced Independent Study. This is a
second semester of independent study, which requires that the
student carry out a research project of his or her own design.
The prerequisite for BIOL 499 is a BIOL 399 in the same laboratory
as the proposed 499. Both BIOL 499 and BIOL 399 can be counted
toward the major requirement for "4 additional courses",
provided that the student's other two courses for the "4
additional courses" requirement are both Biology department
courses.
Undergraduate Program