
*The School of Botany and Zoology Honours - "A wide choice of real* projects"**

BIOL3138 and BIOL3139:
SPECIAL TOPICS IN ECOLOGY EVOLUTION & SYSTEMATICS

These are individually designed courses available to second and third year students in the School of Botany and Zoology. They allow highly motivated students to undertake supervised independent study. Because they are designed for the individual student, they can take many forms. For example:

Participation in a research project.
Guided reading projects in an area of biology of interest to the student.
An intensive training program that is designed to provide students with particular skills not available through the conventional curriculum e.g. botanical internship.

Special Topics courses take the place of conventional lecture courses and count towards the various majors offered by Botany and Zoology. Students are expected to spend about the same amount of time on a special topics unit as they would spend on a conventional course – about 10 hours/week including on-campus work and studying.

If you are planning on doing Honours a special topics course can give you an excellent introduction to independent research and prepare you well for the Honours year.

Special Topics Forms

Questions and Answers

Q. How do I gain entry to a special topics course?

Look at the projects on offer on this site and contact any supervisor whose project interests you. Once an academic has agreed to supervise you, together you will fill in a Special Topics Proposal (1 page).

This proposal must be submitted to the Head, School of Botany and Zoology, who is the overall coordinator of Special Topics courses. The Head will make the final decision about whether the student will be allowed to enrol in the course. If the answer is yes, the student will be issued with a code that will allow them to enrol in the appropriate course.

Q. How much of my degree can be made up from Special Topics courses?

Special topics courses are available in two forms: BIOL3138 (6 points) and BIOL3139 (12 points). The total workload for BIOL3138 is expected to be similar to that for a conventional third year course, while BIOL3139 is expected to be double that load. Both count as Group C courses for the purposes of degree rules, even if they are taken in second year, or during the summer between second and third year.

Students can enrol in one or both of these courses. Permission to enrol in BIOL3138 is easier to get than that for BIOL3139 (students will be expected to have better marks for BIOL3139). Permission to enrol in both BIOL3138 as well as BIOL3139 is rare and these students would generally be expected to have a High Distinction average.

Under special conditions, a student can enrol in two 6-point Special Topics courses (i.e. enrol in BIOL3138 twice). The two courses have to be run by different supervisors and they have to fall in different semesters. If a student does two 6-point Special Topics courses, then they cannot do a 12-point Special Topics course.

Q. What are the constraints?

The first constraint is marks: these courses are designed for highly motivated students. Although exceptions are occasionally made by the Head of Department, students are generally expected to have a Distinction average or higher in order to enrol in special topics Biol3138 (6 points), and a High Distinction average to enrol 3139 (12 points) or more than one Biol3138 unit.

The second constraint is finding a supervisor. These are one-on-one courses, designed for individual students. This makes them very work-intensive for supervisors, and most academics are willing to take on only one or two students in a year.

Apart from the expectation that students will be in at least second year, there are no further constraints. Timing of research-based courses will often depend on the organism under study, and some topics will require intense, full-time involvement, so they are best undertaken over summer. Special Topics courses are arranged between the student and the supervisor on a one-on-one basis. They can take any form that is mutually agreed on, and approved by the head of the School.

Q. What projects are on offer?

All academics in Botany and Zoology are able to supervise Special Topics courses. Also, researchers in the Research School of Biological Sciences and nearby CSIRO divisions can co-supervise students in special topics projects. Not all researchers will offer Special Topics courses each year.

An important first step is to email the researcher you are interested in working with to ask if they are offering special topics projects in the upcoming semester(s).

Examples of Special Topics projects on offer are available. If you don’t find the topic or researcher you’d like to work with – contact any member of ANU staff directly.