VBS & Undergraduate courses

Offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Instructor: Dr. Matthew Aliota
Units: 3 credits
Grading: A-F or Audit
Course components: Lecture
Course attributes: This course fulfills the Global Perspectives Liberal Education requirements
Description: This course is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of protozoan and metazoan parasites, focusing on the biology and epidemiology of parasitic diseases and on the parasite-host association. Parasites are explored in the context of transmission, associated disease, diagnosis and treatment options; and environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic drivers of disease epidemiology.

Offered: Spring 
Instructors: Drs. Dawn Foster-Hartnett, Patricia Goodman-Mamula, James Johnson, and Timothy Johnson
Units: 3 credits
Prerequisites: Must be a sophomore, junior, senior, or graduate student
Course components: Lecture/Discussion, 11:45am-12:35pm, MWF
Course attributes: Antibiotic resistance, globalization, societal and ethical implications, alternative therapeutic approaches
Description: This course provides an overview of how antibiotic use invoked antibiotic resistance, including in depth discussions of antibiotic resistant microorganisms and the impact of globalization on this exploding problem.

Offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Instructor: Dr. Zheng Xing
Units: 2 credits
Prerequisite: honors student
Grading: A-F
Description: The course will explore the causes and trend, and organismal and ecosystem responses, to climate change and extreme weather, identify the links between climate change and various diseases, and evaluate the challenges and vulnerabilities of different populations to climate-induced health problems. The course will specifically examine a series of topics to demonstrate the impact of the climate change on environment, disease vectors, zoonotic diseases, and their increasing risks for novel emerging epidemics or pandemics. Emphasis will also be placed to assess how the changed climate may have profound impact on food security and nutrition-related illnesses, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, cancer, mental health, aging, and management of the chronic illnesses that have been critical for global health governance of the modern society. The course will encourage students to contemplate the challenging topics, explore public health strategies to mitigate the negative impact, and prepare students to develop skills for raising public awareness and promoting policy advocacy in building a resilient health system.

Offered: Periodic Fall
Instructor: Dr. Zheng Xing
Units: 2 credits
Prerequisite: honors student
Course components: Discussion
Description: This course explores the interaction of human, animals, and microbes and examines how microbes, pathogenic microbes in particular, have influenced human evolution and civilization. The course expects to expose students to the thinking from a historic and interdisciplinary perspective that microbes, especially those causing pandemics and epidemic for centuries, may have played critical roles in influencing human history and shaping modern civilization, although social, cultural, technical, and other factors have been major players. Emphasis will be placed on a few microbes, such as plague, smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, tuberculosis, retrovirus, and influenza and their impacts on important events in human history. Microbes may also impact human evolution as a fraction of human genome is from retrovirus and some genetic diseases including cystic fibrosis in humans may arise from resistance to epidemics of deadly microbes.
Knowledge of general microbiology will be introduced but is not a requirement.

Offered: Fall 
Units: 4 units
Grading basis: A - F or Audit
Course components: Laboratory - Required; Lecture - Required
Course attributes: Biological Sciences, Technology and Society
Description: Basic understanding of cell biology/biotechnology. Laboratory exercises using modern molecular biotechnology techniques. Lectures. History of biotechnology. Cell biology/biotechnology. Develop research plan.

Offered: Fall/Spring
Instructor: Dr. Chris Hergenrader
Units: 1 credit
Prerequisite: None
Course components: Lecture/Discussion, 3-3:50pm, M
Course attributes: Students will be able to listen to and engage with veterinarians, faculty, and staff from the community and the UMN College of Veterinary Medicine
Description: This course gives students a broad overview of the field of veterinary medicine, to better understand what is involved in navigating the path to pursuing a career as a veterinarian, and share information that will help decide if veterinary medicine is a field and career worth pursuing.

Offered: Fall, Spring and Summer
Units: 5 units
Grading basis: A - F only
Course components: Laboratory - Required; Lecture - Required
Description: Bacterial metabolism, growth/genetics, biology of viruses/fungi. Control of microorganisms. Host-microbe interactions, microorganisms/disease, applied microbiology
Prerequisites: One semester each of college chemistry, biology

Offered: Spring
Units: 3 units
Grading basis: A - F only
Course components: Laboratory - Required; Lecture - Required
Description: Develop anatomical knowledge through study/dissection. Compare/contrast animal adaptations.
Prerequisite: General Biology (e.g., BIOL 1009) is recommended

Offered: Spring
Instructor: Dr. Emily Truckenbrod
Units: 3 credits
Prerequisite: None
Course components: Lecture/Discussion, 2:30-4pm, M/W
Course attributes: This class uses an Active Learning Classroom model with group work and discussion based learning to maintain active engagement during each session.
Description: This course is designed to help students both understand and apply basic concepts related to immunology. The format is a combination of active lectures and cooperative learning in groups. The VBS 5131 course for graduate credit will also give graduate students the opportunity to submit a research proposal pertaining to immunology in addition to the other course requirements.

Offered: Spring
Instructor: Dr. Randall Singer
Units: 3 credits
Prerequisite: None. A background in statistics is recommended but not required.
Course components: Lecture/Discussion, 9:00am-12pm, F
Course attributes: This class uses computer-based exercises to teach basic GIS concepts, an introduction to spatial analysis, GIS in public health, and the inputs required to conceptualize and create a successful GIS project.
Description: This course provides students with a framework for analyzing spatial disease data so that they can better understand spatial distribution of disease events (exposures and outcomes, and factors that determine where disease occurs.) With a focus on One Health principles.