(As a note, I am SO sorry for not having posted this earlier! I could have sworn I posted it, but I guess it was just sitting in my drafts for a long time.)

Hi, my name is Paul Paterson and I’m a freshman honors student majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a double minor in Physics & Astronomy as well as Computer Science. The following picture is one of my friends and I at the Bubble Cafe downtown. I am the front left person.

1. As an engineering student, science is one of the most important fields in my studies, along with math and pure engineering. In addition, the depth to which science can explain the world around us has always fascinated me. Science also shows us how little we know about many things, while providing the tools to learn everything about them. I took 4 AP science classes in high school (Chemistry, Computer Science A, Physics C – Mechanics, and Physics C – Electricity and Magnetism) and numerous honors classes in scientific disciplines. My personal favorites were my two AP Physics and my Honors Robotics courses, as they solidified my desire to work in engineering, specifically aerospace engineering (which is simply a sub-type of mechanical engineering). This is my only pure science course this semester, but I will likely be taking several more in the future.

2. Through this course, I hope to advance my knowledge of biology and be able to apply that knowledge to projects not directed related to biology at all. Recent developments in robotics, computing, structural and mechanical engineering, and more have been increasingly based upon principles found in nature. We have so much to learn from the world around us here on Earth that can help us get to places beyond our home, such as our moon and Mars, and I hope to learn how to utilize that untapped potential.

3. The projects that interest me most are probably the watershed visit (because I can learn about the engineering behind it) and the visit to Clarke Central (because I grew up in this area and would be interested to see how it is affected by the things we will learn about in this class). In addition, these activities would give us the experience and knowledge to further teach our communities about biology.

I haven’t taken a science class since high school, when I took Biology in 9th grade, Chemistry 10 and 11th (AP), and Physics C 12th. Probably out of them, my favorite was physics.

Since I’ve forgotten most of what I learned in biology (and I also didn’t have a great class), I would like to get a basic understanding of it from this class (seriously, all I did was memorize frog calls).

I would be most interested in participating the Rivers Alive watershed cleanup. I think this activity will help the community understand where litter is entering the watershed, which will help further in prevention. I also think it is important that we interact with people outside of UGA to see how our action effect the community around us.

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2a) I have taken AP Environmental Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in high school.

b) Out of the 4 that I’ve taken, I really enjoyed taking Environmental Science. My teacher was very nice, and I also enjoyed learning about the way the ecosystems and organisms cooperate and affect one another. I also liked learning about the impacts humans make on their surrounding environments and the Earth, as well as ways to lessen my own impact.

3) From this course, I hope to take with me, any new knowledge of the world around me or biology, in general.

4) I would like to participate in the Outreach with Clarke Central High School students or the Rivers Alive Watershed Clean Up. I don’t have much scientific skills I can bring to the table for either of these projects, but I have worked and socialized with people younger than me and participated in clean ups for my church.

The issue of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is that probably biggest appeal to most of my fellow students for the safety of well-being, as well as the people around us.

As for the watersheds, the cleanliness of the water sources is what concerns most of my fellow classmates. Because the condition of our water sources affects both our health and future generations.

5) Through participation in a service-learning, I will learn ways to address issues within environments and how to engage with the community to help solve the issue.

6) I am interested in ecology like how different organisms and ecosystems impact each other and are impacted by changes. In this class, I hope that I can learn about the different impacts of changes, such as adding new organisms or the change in gene pools, on an ecosystem and its organisms. And how to lessen these impacts if they’re not beneficial for the environment, especially in the long run.

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2. I took science all four years in High School. I took Biology, Chemistry, and Physics all at the accelerated/gifted level. Senior year, I took Astronomy in the Dual Enrollment program at Georgia State University. The class I most enjoyed was physics, because I am a math-oriented person and I love to solve physics problems. My second favorite class was biology, because of all the hands-on activities we were able to accomplish.

3. I want to gain an understanding for my body and how it works. I want to understand how what I put into my body affects it, and I also want to learn about what we can do to help conserve our environment. I also want to come out of this class with more people that I am friendly with, who I can say hi to around campus.

4. The projects that interest me most are the tailgating clean up and the visit to Clarke Central High. I am interested in the tailgating clean up because I have been coming to Georgia Football games my whole life and I never realized or would have imagined that people would trash our beautiful campus like they do. I am interested in the CCHS visit because I always found it very helpful and fun when college students and older people visited to help me with academics, and I want to be able to help students in that same way.

5. I want to be able to learn about more things that I can do to conserve the Earth, and how we can make this planet the best it can be for a long time. I also hope to learn about proper ways to give back to the community because I have been given so much in my life already.

6. In general in this course I want to learn about more public outreach opportunities around me, as well as learn about human health and what is beneficial to the body and what could potentially be harmful.

My previous experience with science pretty much comes from the courses I had to take in high school. I took robotics, physical science, biology, chemistry, and physics. I enjoyed robotics and biology the most. Robotics because you were given the chance to be creative and think outside the box, and biology because there wasn’t much math involved.

I would like to get a true knowledge of biology and the world around us that I won’t immediately when the course is over.

The tailgating and rivers alive watershed clean up projects interest me the most. This is because both projects involve going out into the community and actively doing things as opposed to sitting in a lab or just staring at a computer. I was deeply involved with my high school’s Key Club, and we often had neighborhood trash clean up days. I had to organize and execute these clean ups, and I believe these experiences would help me complete the aforementioned projects. I think the issues of trash on our campus and in our rivers would appeal to my fellow students because the aspects of the issue are tangible and students see the issue everyday. This might be more appealing than testing the bacteria samples from a river because it’s an issue that’s invisible to most people. I’m not saying this to invalidate the issue of fecal coliform bacteria in the river, but I just believe people will care about it less since it’s not a very visible issue.

Relative to civic engagement, these projects would teach us the most effective ways to educate the public on issues. Cleaning up trash is one thing, but educating the students of UGA to prevent the littering is another. We would also learn how to collaborate with others by working with the high school students.

I would like to learn the effects things like pollution and extreme litter have on a biological level. In my opinion, putting biology in the context of real life issues makes it much more interesting.

In high school I took Biology, Chemistry, AP Physics 1, and AP Physics C. I enjoyed physics the most because my teacher was really down to earth and connected with his students. It was also math based, my best subject. Hopefully through this course I will have a better understanding of the living and how to preserve life moving forward in life. I am beyond excited for my first tailgate as a college student, but the tailgating project for post-game cleaning really brings interest. Growing up I always enjoyed going to Georgia games with my dad or friends, and these experiences only makes me more curious on how the cleanup process works and how we, as students, can do better to preserve our environment. Through this project, I feel like I will learn that more people are curious about this similar problem, and we can all come together to research and prepare for future tailgates. Through this Biology course, I hope to learn more about genetics and how they shape who we are and what we look like.

In High School, I took Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, with Chemistry being at the AP level. I definitely enjoyed Chemistry more than the other two because of the teachers I had, but physics was also a fairly enjoyable class. I would like to develop a better understanding of the relevance that Biology has on my everyday life, which is something that didn’t happen in high school Biology. The tailgate project most intrigues me, because I have tailgated before, and being in high school at the time made me a little naive to the fact that the trash left behind really leaves a footprint. Because I know that tailgating is such a big deal on this campus, I would assume that would be the most appealing to a great deal of students. I would probably learn that cooperation when it comes to civic engagement is not ever going to be mandatory, so it’s hard to be too aggressive in getting people to help out. But at the same time, in order to make a change, assertiveness is key. I will also learn that while what we do can be a step in the right direction, even further action must be taken to completely resolve a certain issue. I want to learn more about genes and heritability.

1. This is me! My roommate/best friend from middle school took this photo of me last night while I was reading something!

2. A. I took a lot of physical sciences in high school, including AP Physics C. I last took a life science in 9th grade and I was not the biggest fan of the class to say the least (to be fair, I was a gifted student who was wrongly placed in a lower level class, so…)

B. I liked physics a lot because it explains how our world works in a mathematical way. I think that’s the thing I like most about Statistics, my major. They both mathematically model our daily experiences. I haven’t found that same excitement in Biology yet but maybe this year will be different!

3. I want to enjoy biology and learn more, especially the data-oriented side of it. Among my potential jobs in the future, I am considering working as a statistician for the CDC so Biology would be very important.

4. I love visiting bodies of water and admiring their beauty so any project involving the preservation of that beauty is interesting (ie the watershed cleanup). I was pretty good at Statistics in high school so I could maybe help with the data analysis portion of the project. The health and wellbeing of our environment is probably a major concern for many students so they will react in a more positive way to try to preserve the watersheds if they see the trash.

5. I think I’ll learn how much it helps just to try to help one piece of trash at a time. Every little bit helps and no one piece is insignificant.

6. I want to learn about immune diseases and any potential link to other factors. Many of my family members have an autoimmune disease, myself included, so I would be very interested in learning more about it.