From the Undergraduate Catalog:

A series of presentations by those students who have completed their environmental science internships. The purpose of the seminar is to give students the opportunity to present an oral report on the tasks performed in their Environmental Science Internships and at the same time relate those tasks to the broader areas of consideration in the environmental field. The course is a one-semester course designed to satisfy the Comprehensive Examination requirement for environmental science majors. 1 credit

Normally, students make their presentations on Friday afternoons during the latter half of the Spring semester. All students registered in ES 490 are required to attend all the presentations. Other ES majors are encouraged to attend.

The format of the meeting is the following:

i) presentation of the internship report by the student

ii) question/answer period

iii) general milling about

Environmental Science faculty members evaluate the presentation and assign numerical scores. The evaluation form is shown here. The scores of all the evaluation forms are averaged. In addition, an attendance score is given to each student registered in ES 490 which is multiplied by the individual’s presentation score—the product determines the student’s letter grade. In other words, failure to attend all the presentations will lead to a reduction in the course grade.

There are no scheduled "class meetings" for ES 490 during the semester. However, the student must meet with the instructor once during the first two weeks of the semester to discuss the course requirements.  It is then incumbent on the student to prepare his or her presentation in a timely fashion, and to arrange with the instructor of ES 490 to schedule the meeting time for the presentation. The instructor is available at any time during the semester for consultation & advice on any aspect of the presentation from content to organization to preparation of Powerpoint slides to holding practice sessions, etc.

For Spring 2008, the instructor is

Instructor: Dr. J. Kiefer e-mail address: jkiefer@sbu.edu