Vaccines are often heralded by medical professionals as one of, if not the most, important inventions in healthcare to date. A vaccine is “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease” [1].

Biology in Society Senior Seminar

Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2010

Session 7

Disconnect Between the Scientific Community and the Public

 What's working? Well, we all seem to be able to work cooperatively, especially online. I like how our class is able to feed off of each other's ideas on the course forum. Actually, I'd say that what works most in this course is its heavy use of an online community. By posting online, whether it be the webpapers or a weekly posting, I have found that my attitude toward writing has shifted. No longer do I write for a professor - I'm writing for something more global. My writing is about conversation, about involving as many people as I can in a dialogue. And even more exciting, that dialogue has a chance to cross from the virtual world into reality as my classmates respond to what I've posted.

 I enjoy this course and I've noticed that I've been able to find something in each of the books useful or interesting, even if the work as a whole did not impress me. 

I like what we've done and I'm really interested to see where we're going, especially now that we're going to be shaping the course ourselves. 

 The first half of the semester in this class has been interesting.  Like veritatemdilexi, I tend to watch the clock in most of my classes, but time in this class seems to fly by.  My participation in class could definitely be worked on, but I think the class discussions so far have brought up a lot of different view points and opinions.   Sometimes it seems like the discussions move a little too far from the original topic, and more into just debates about smaller details, but at least there is participation from the majority of the class.  I like that there is opportunity for everyone to give their opinions if they want to.