Resources & Tips
OFFICE OF ACADEMIC RESOURCES​
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Academic Coaching
You can schedule unlimited one-on-one sessions with a professional staff member all throughout fall, spring, and summer.
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Peer Tutoring
Peer Tutoring is the tutoring sessions offered by students who have taken the course and very familiar with the course materials. They can help you to better understand the fundamental concepts. general contexts, and personalized questions. You can either a weekly session or a one time session with your tutor.
Remember to briefly describe or submit the documents that you expect to work on or submit the documents to utilize the time more efficiently!
WRITING CENTER​
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Writing is VERY important for scientists to communicate with each other! You might need to write a lot of research proposals, literature reviews, and articles all through tour academic career. Get started on improving your writing skills asap and your writing partners are ready to help!
CONTACTING PROFESSORS
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Professors will hold office hours for each course. Office hours are always great chances for you to catch up with what you missed from course and clarify specific confusions. The information will be posted on syllabus or moodle page. Most of office hours are walk-in, while sometimes it needs reservation.
Also, reach out to professors whenever you feel like need help from an experienced senior, they will be willing to talk you through!
BQC & GLG (for BIOL 200/201)​
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Biology Question Center (BQC): It is hosted about three times per week by students who have taken biology 200/201. They will mostly be helpful with lecture assignments. Some professors prefer not to have BQC but host more office hours. If BQC is available, the schedule will be posted on moodle.
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Guided Laboratory Group (GLG): It is hosted about three times per week by students who have taken biology 200/201 labs. GLG will help with all type of lab assignments, including pre-lab, post-lab, lab reports, and lab notebooks. GLG attendance is always counted towards course grades. It is usually required to go to at least two GLG sessions per quarter.
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Superlab FAQs and Advice​
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Superlab is a required course for all biology majors (2 semesters) with goals of getting students accustomed to research, preparing students for senior thesis, and overall, helping students develop as a scientist! The great thing about Superlab is that you will be doing real research, and your experiments will be conducted with the goal of answering questions in that particular research field. Since this is research, experiments may need redos, or modifications, and results may be unexpected. However, the professors are there to guide you through any of these scenarios!
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Superlab typically consists of 3 weekly meeting times: 1 lecture section on Monday, and two lab sections other days during the week. Like any class, there will be work expected outside of class time; with Superlab, this may come in the form of wet lab work, especially for labs relying on biological organisms or cells. This is overall very typical of research, so professors are very aware of this and work extremely hard to not make the workload over 10-12 hours a week and try to keep as much wet lab work during class time as possible!
You will be expected to keep a lab notebook (some professors prefer paper, some prefer digital) and a lot of the dry lab work may consist of reading up on your topic, making graphs and figures, running statistical tests. If you have never done some of these before, it is completely okay and the professors will give you the necessary assistance and background.
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There is definitely a lot more to say since Superlab is such a unique core requirement here at Haverford Bio department. If you want to learn more information about Superlab course organizations, techniques that you may need, and tips that help you to succeed in this class, check out the A Biologist’s Guide to Superlab written by BSG! This could be a great source to prepare you for the course!
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Thesis FAQs and Secrets
Thesis is a 2-semester research project where you are the leader under the guidance of one of our faculty members. You will work collaboratively with 3-5 other students under the guidance of the same faculty member as well! Thesis is not a strict class time, however, seniors are required to be in 499 (1/2 credit for the full year) and attend weekly lab meetings. You are not only expected to write a paper for your thesis, but also occationally present to your peers about your thesis.
The match is a process developed by the biology department to assign students to faculty for thesis advising. During your junior year, students will attend a meeting where you will learn about each faculty member's research to help better your decision for deciding a possible advisor. Students then fill out a form ranking the top 4 professors they would like for advising. An algorithm then matches students to professors to ensure maximum happiness across the department as a whole! You do not have to have taken a class with that professor or previously been involved in that professor's research to end up in their lab for thesis.
Thesis can be 1-credit a semester, 1.5, or even 2-credits a semester. A 1-credit thesis entails 10 hours of work a week. A 1.5-credit thesis is 15 hours of work a week, and a 2-credit thesis is 20 hours a week. The default is a 1-credit thesis; if a 1.5 or 2-credit thesis interests you, make sure you talk to your faculty advisor before senior fall registration is over.
Thesis is a wonderful opportunity to develop yourself as an independent scientist and take a deep dive into a biology topic you love!