This was one of the most unexpectedly useful classes Ive ever taken. You spend most of the semester working on a research project in small groups. Our project was on genomics of invasive ants, but I hear that the project changes each semester so you'd probably get something different. The learning curve for the project was steep but I ended up learning so much so it was definitely worth it! The professors are currently working on publishing the results of our project and all of the students get to be authors on the paper, so soon I will have my first publication to put on my resume. We also had a project where we had to interview an international researcher, which was one of my favorite parts of the class. That said, it is a lot of work especially at the end of the course when the researc...read more

The research project is the big focus. We had a few weeks of background lectures then we dived in to data collection for the rest of the semester. Our project involved a lot of computer coding, which I hated at first but ended up liking by the end after I knew how to do it. There are also a lot of discussions in this class about things like ethics, international science, etc. I was surprised at how interesting everything was and I think a lot of these skills will be useful later, esp when applying to grad school next year.

There are multiple professors for the class. Dr. Auletta seems to be the lead instructor and he is just wonderful– probably my favorite professor at UF! He's so kind and welcoming! I've taken some of his other classes before, so I knew him coming into the class. Dr. DiGennaro was the other main professor. He's got a very dry sense of humor but is very helpful if you ask him questions. The other instructors were less involved, more like guest lecturers.

If you're interested in research or want a professional development class that is actually useful, definitely take this one! I was surprised by how interesting it was and how much I got out of the class. If you're looking for an easy class that doesn't require much work, look elsewhere. This is one where you have to put in the effort to get the A.

Very boring, hated being forced to code.

It was literally a programming course in Hipergator the whole semester. Did not sign up for that lol.

Hes nice just the course sucks.

About the coding