An introductory course in human evolutionary biology. Natural selection and its genetic basis are used to highlight a variety of human traits. The fossil record is addressed, but the course takes more of an "adaptationist" than a paleontological perspective.
5
UnitsOptional
Grading1, 2, 3
PasstimeNone
Level LimitLetters and science
CollegeLecture
Sections
Hard to follow lectures if you don't do & understand the concepts from the reading but still doable if you fall a bit behind. His office hours are very useful if you have trouble with the homework. 1 take home final and 1 paper. Paper was interesting because he lets you choose your topic. Don't wait to start the take home final it takes time.
There are 5 HW assignments that require knowledge in basic stats and especially excel, but if you've taken Anth 161 or Anth 9, you should be fine. It's very basic excel stuff. The final paper is 4-5 pages long and is very easy. There was no midterm and a take home final exam, which was easy, with the exception of a couple questions. Easy stuff.
The tests were unnecessarily complexly worded. When students asked questions in class or tried to answer his questions, he was pretty condescending.The class is mislabeled as Behavior Ecology on Gold but was actually a Hunter gatherer ecology class. I did like the limited amount of assignments, but just beware that they're graded harshly
His TA (Yoann Buoro) sucks. His TA will take away points for the dumbest things. I had so many points taken away for things that were not even on the rubric. If you want to be constantly emailing the TA about why you got the grade you did just for him to just say a lot of nothing take this class.This TA is so bad beware.
Gurven is very passionate and tries his best to make lecture interesting. Class is graded by 4 homework assignments (only 1 math), and a midterm and a final. He gave us 5 days to do the open book, open note midterm. There's a lot of readings but you can get away with skimming them. The class isn't a super easy A but it is by no means difficult.
Hands down the worst anthro class I've ever taken as an anth major. If you want to graduate or get a good grade, please don't take this class. The lectures and material are confusing and doesn't apply to the homework or exams. FYI, there's a lot of MATH required for this class. I was definitely not expecting an anthro class to assign math HW