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EE Biol 199 AND 198 A-D

Guidelines for petitioning 199 faculty sponsors  |   Suggested format for research papers

EE Biol 198A-D

Independent Research in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

student doing labwork

Students must be seniors with 3.0 GPA or above. Transfer students may not enroll during their first quarter at UCLA. Sponsors must be faculty members in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

The 198 series is designed for long-term projects. A paper is not due until the completion of the second quarter (198B). Students must complete at least two quarters of 198 (198A and 198B).

198A and B are required for departmental highest honors at graduation; the other requirement is that the student must have a GPA of 3.6 both overall and in the upper division courses in biology and other departments applied on the major. Students nominated for departmental honors are required to have a GPA of 3.4 overall and in the upper division courses in biology and other departments applied on the major, but need not have taken 198A and B.

Students can enroll in four units of 198 per quarter. Students must enroll in 198A followed by 198B the next quarter. Unit credit and grades are received at the end of the second quarter, 198B. Your transcript will show an IP grade (in progress) for the 198A entry and eight units of the grade assigned for the 198B entry. One unit of credit is given for about three hours of work per week; for four units of credit, the student needs to put in about 12 hours of work per week.

EE Biol 199 Independent Research in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Students must be juniors with 3.0 GPA, or seniors. Transfer students may not enroll their first quarter at UCLA. You must have no outstanding Incomplete grades in a 199 course. Sponsors must be faculty members in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

If your sponsor is not a faculty member in EEB, you must enroll for a 199 in the sponsor's department (for example, Microbiology or Surgery) and petition for the 199 to be applied to your major after the course is completed. Details on this procedure are available in the EEB Undergraduate Office. Please note that approval is not guaranteed.

One unit of credit equals about three hours per week; for four units of credit, the student needs to put in about 12 hours of work per week. Projects are usually limited to four or fewer units per quarter.

You may want to consider enrolling for an EE Biol 198 course rather than a 199 if you anticipate that you may be eligible for departmental highest honors at graduation; the other requirement is that the student have a GPA of 3.6 both overall and in the upper division courses in biology and other departments applied on the major.


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Guidelines for Petitioning 199 Faculty Sponsors Outside Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

For credit toward their major, Biology majors must enroll in 199 courses with sponsors who are members of the faculty of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. However, the Department will consider petitions to accept four units (the equivalent of one course) of 199 credit from courses outside EEB to be applied toward the three upper division science elective courses (category 5), if the following conditions are met.

  1. The focus of the study must be biological in nature and involve original research (i.e., not a library research project, clinical trials, software design, etc.).
  2. The course petitioned must have been taken for a grade (not P/NP).
  3. The student must have been primarily responsible for the work performed (i.e., projects where the student's participation is mostly as a technician or a junior member of a larger research project will not be considered).
  4. The student must write a report in the form of a research paper. The student must be the sole author of this paper. Handouts describing the expected form and content of the paper are available from the EEB Undergraduate Office. Students will be expected to adhere to the required format.
  5. The student must ask his or her faculty supervisor to send an e-mail to the EEB Undergraduate Advising Office (eebundergrad@lifesci.ucla.edu) confirming the subject of the student's research, the quarter in which it was performed, and assigning a letter grade for the student's work.
  6. The student must present his/her paper to a second faculty member not directly affiliated with the project, but with a general knowledge of the research area for evaluation of the merit of the project, and ask them to send an e-mail to one of the counselors above confirming that the research design was appropriate and recommending that it be applied on the student's major.
  7. The paper and the two e-mails will be reviewed by the EEB Undergraduate Faculty Advisor and a decision made on whether the course can be applied on the Biology major. Please allow approximately one to two weeks for this review process.

Students enroll in 198 or 199 courses outside EEB through the department of their faculty sponsor, not through EEB, and that sponsor will assign their grades. After the course is completed and the grade is assigned, students may petition to have the course count for their major requirements through the process above.

Generally the hours per week expected of students in research equals the number of units times three. For example, if the student is taking the 199/198 for two units they will be in the lab for six hours. Please be sure to check with the sponsor's department for clarification on this regulation.


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Suggested Format for EEB 198/199 Research Papers

Part of learning to be an experimental scientist is learning to communicate your results. Your paper should make clear to an educated biologist why you did the experiments, what results you obtained, what you think is the meaning of these results, and what experiments you would do next (if you had time).

  1. Title page Include your name, the quarter(s) during which you did the research, the course number (198A, 199 etc.) and the professor in whose laboratory you performed the research.
  2. Introduction (limit to not more than three pages) Consult with your research supervisor to obtain background references that help you understand the context of your research.
    1. Describe the general phenomenon under consideration (note relevant history, background studies, cite relevant previous work).
    2. Focus on the specific point of the study; state relative importance.
    3. State purpose of your study; question being asked or hypotheses to be tested.
  3. Methods (limit to not more than two pages)
    1. Design of experiments; sequence of manipulations; controls (include such things as glassware, tools, time, temperature, volumes, illumination, sampling, replication, numbers, weights, etc.).
    2. Analytical techniques: how you acquired your data.
  4. Results (no page limit; three to six is the norm)
    1. Motivation statement (repeat for each experiment you performed) e.g. "To determine if... how much... whether or not... , I measured... counted... PCR amplified... labeled... ectrophoresed... antibody stained... crossed... , the effect of x on y... the amount of x accumulated in time... the number of x per liter... , etc. The data show... (give results)... (Table a) or (Fig. b)." B. Present the data in tables and figures. Each table must have a title, and each figure must have a legend.
  5. Discussion (limit to not more than three pages)
    1. Interpret your results, and relate them to the original purpose of the paper.
    2. Compare your results with observations of others (bring in and cite relevant literature); reconcile differences.
    3. Mention sources of error problems and rationalizations.
    4. Point out the relevance and implications of this study.
    5. Suggest next steps for future studies.
    6. Keep in mind, even negative results have significance, if only implications for how to improve techniques or methods of future experiments.
  6. Summary (limit to one-half page)
  7. References
    1. Include all papers that are cited in your paper. Do not include papers that are not cited. Make sure that your references are footnoted or otherwise cited in the body of your paper and not just listed in this section!
    2. Have at least five references.
    3. Cite papers and write references as done in such journals as: Ecology, American Naturalist, or Evolution.

Be sure to use spell-checking and (if you have it) grammar checking options. All papers must have citations -- usually in the Introduction and Discussion.