REQUIRED TEXTBOOK:
Gazzaniga, M.S. (2018). Psychological Science (6th ed.). New York: Norton.
A NOTE ABOUT EXAMS:
There will be regular weekly quizzes in this class, which you will be able to take any time in the 24 hours after the quiz appears on Sakai. Most weeks, a quiz will become available on Sakai on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. PT. You will be given only 25 minutes to finish this assignment, so you will need to have learned the material in the chapter prior to beginning the quiz; there won’t be enough time to go searching through an electronic textbook to find the answers! Each quiz will cover material from the chapter we’ve discussed that week, and will consist of 10 multiple choice questions. Taken together, your performance on these quizzes will constitute a full 36% of your grade. This might seem like a lot, but because there will be 12 of them, no single quiz will be exceptionally valuable.
The midterm and final exams in this class will require you to write essays. The midterm will be worth 24% of your grade and the final will be worth 25% of your grade. The midterm exam will happen during the class period (on October 8) and the final exam will happen on December 1, in a dedicated time slot assigned by Pitzer College. These exams will not be cumulative.
GRADING:
Students earning between 93% and 100% of the points available in this course will receive an A in the course. Students earning between 90% and 92% will receive an A- … and so on, as indicated in this chart:
ACADEMIC ACCOMMODATIONS:
Please note that I will make every reasonable effort to accommodate students with disabilities. For Pitzer students, to request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Pitzer's Academic Support Services (PASS) in the Office of Student Affairs to inquire about accommodations and support services (ACADEMIC ACCOMMODATIONS). It would be best for any interested students to contact PASS early in the semester so that a collaborative plan can be developed for the academic year. PASS will work with students to identify reasonable and appropriate accommodations. If you attend another one of the Claremont Colleges, please contact your home college’s disability officer; you can get more information about that by contacting the Claremont Colleges Student Disability Resource Center here: sdrc@cuc.claremont.edu.
STANDARD CONTENT WARNING:
Please note that the material covered in this course may be challenging to some students, because it will cover topics related to human psychology, possibly including subjects such as mental illness, depression, suicide, psychosis, child neglect or maltreatment, pathological behaviors, sexual behaviors, evolution, obesity and/or eating disorders, recreational drug use/abuse, or any of several other topics that some individuals might find re-traumatizing. Please feel free to “step out” of our Zoom classroom during a class if you need to. Having said that, please be aware that these are standard topics of discussion in psychology courses, so any of the information covered in the course could appear on exams or quizzes.
TEXTBOOK LOAN:
The Pitzer College Dean of Students Loan Library makes it possible for students enrolled at Pitzer College to borrow course-related texts for a full semester, free of charge. More information can be found on the Dean’s Loan Library webpage.
PSYCHOLOGICAL MATERIAL ON THE MCAT:
For more information on the psychological section of the MCAT, please click here.