[BIOL 0140]
Ecology and Evolution

Rate This Class

Professor: Backus V

Value of Course / Overall Score

Not Much (18.2%
Average (27.3%)
Valuable (54.5%)

Material

Friendly (18.2%)
Average (45.5%)
Competitive (36.4%)

Class Atmosphere

Boring (70%)
Average (30%)
Fascinating (0%)

Prep Time Needed

1-2hr (10%)
3-5hr (50%)
6-8hr (20%)
9-11hr (20%)
12+ hr (0%)

Grade Weighting

Harder (70%)
Average (0%)
Easier (30%)

Adequate Assistance

Yes (90%)
No (10%)

Would Recommend Class

Yes (50%)
No (50%)

Evaluation Comments for Backus V

  1. No Comment
  2. No Comment
  3. grading was extremely harsh but is useful to help you learn lab report writing skills
  4. I don't think there is any debate that Prof. Backus is a strict grader. While she is not particularly good at making her expectations clear, JUST READ THE LAB MANUAL and you will be fine. She provides the rubric for each assignment so you can ensure that you include all of the necessary material. The class was fun, well constructed and, most importantly, interesting. However, it is important to realize that this is a college level biology course and standards are set as such. Upon taking 140 and 145 you will be adept at writing publication quality lab reports, which is well worth the work.
  5. Professor Backus is a brilliant biologist, but needs to tone it down a notch on grading. Her secret, ridiculous system of grading took away from the science and emphasized trying to emulate her style of writing and lab formatting.
  6. really hard grader
  7. Pay attention to everything she says and hands out to you. She's no the most interesting lecturer, but if she's taking time to explain something chances are you will need to be able to explain it in a lab report later. She hands out or posts the grading rubrics for most assignments which you should really use. They detail everything she could possibly deduct points off of. She really doesn't care how nice your writing sounds, just that it conveys the correct information in a concise manner. She's super friendly and always willing to sit down with you and go over anything you might have questions about, so don't be afraid to approach her.
  8. Personally, I am not particularly interested in the subject of ecology, so overall I didn't find the material fascinating. Also, I had heard absolutely scathing reports about Professor Backus, whom I had for lab. However, I found the lab section to be a pleasant surprise and generally enjoyable. Professor Backus has an evident passion for ecology which makes things I would usually find unbearably boring to be actually quite interesting. Professor Backus was definitely one of the nicest, most understanding and helpful professors I've had at Middlebury. She was ALWAYS available for help and assistance both in and out of class, and she was very understanding about extending deadlines due to conflicts and difficulties. I thought the standards of grading and expectations for each assignment were very clear: Seriously, for the lab reports, just READ YOUR MANUAL. It gives basically sentence-by-sentence explicit instructions for every section. She also gave us rubrics for every assignment beforehand. I found Professor Backus's grading to be very fair. I had never done formal lab write-ups or statistical tests at all before, and I was scared to death. However, Professor Backus made the processes and information easy to understand and not at all intimidating. The class overall was very friendly and enjoyable, and I feel like I learned a ton. I really loved Professor Backus and don't understand at all why she has (at least from the people I've talked to) such a negative reputation.
  9. I often feel like Professor Backus gets a bad rap just because she's tough. This is true: be prepared to work like a dog with Backus because she is most definitely a tough professor and a tough grader with high expectations. That said, she is an incredibly kind woman who is always willing to help students with lab reports and assignments. She's also brilliant and fun to talk to in general. About half of the labs for this course are inside labs, about half are outside/field labs. Lab reports are incredibly time consuming and difficult, but by the end of the course I felt like my ability to write a decent lab report had improved substantially. Also: MAKE SURE TO READ THE LAB MANUALS CAREFULLY BECAUSE PRE-LAB QUIZZES ARE TRICKY! All the information is included in the lab manuals, it's just sometimes difficult to pick out what might be on a lab quiz. The lab manuals are explicitly outlined and are great sources of information. Read them!
  10. Backus is a tough grader and kind of a coarse person who takes some getting used to. I also thought a lot of the labs are stupid because I'm taking the course for premed, so why do i need to know how to count macro-invertebrates in a stream, or the number of trees in a forest. You would then have to write up big lab reports about these silly labs, which were graded very harshly. I would try and take the lab section with someone else if i were to do it again.
  11. Professor Backus' teaching of the Ecology and Evolution lab left something to be desired: her grading was unnecessarily harsh and never gave students the benefit of the doubt (example: she grades by tenths of a point, but always seems to make sure to give 91.3 or 86.2 so it rounds down...), and she didn't explain the lab material before quizzing us on it. She also generally didn't give enough feedback on larger assignments like lab manuscripts, and asked us to turn in the next manuscript or write-up before we had seen her grade or comments on the last one. Talking to her outside of class was only sometimes useful... However, the studies we did in lab were fascinating! Creating natural selection pressures in bacteria to develop resistance to triclosan, seeing parts of our own DNA and correlating them with phenotype, counting and classifying aquatic insects in the Middlebury River, and studying the pine population of an old quarry were all valuable and fun learning experiences. The best part of the course was our nature walk at the end of the year to the Otter Creek Gorge Preserve. Overall, I enjoyed the lab component of this class, but felt that it would have been much more meaningful and satisfying with a teacher other than Professor Backus.
  12. Backus won't tell you what is supposed to be in your lab report until she's handing back her ridiculously detailed rubric with all the x's where you didn't do it.
  13. [For LAB] Prof. Backus knows her stuff, but she is quirky and seems to get caught up in technicalities when grading lab reports and presentations. I wish her feedback on my assignments had been more related to scientific content rather than the structure of my writing. Be prepared for lots of tedious work with Excel - especially if you are a first-year. Overall, an ok lab, but I am partial to Ecology/Evolution.

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