I've been considering which classes to take in the fall at Western Carolina. I have one required class for all incoming master's students in the Biology program plus a one credit seminar. That leaves me with room for two other classes.
One class that I'm certain that I will take is Ecological Co-adaptations which is about co-evolutionary interactions in the ecosystem. The other two classes I'm considering are a plant physiology class and a population and community ecology class. The choice between the two is tough. While I could use the information and experience from both, I'm leaning toward P&C ecology. The plant physiology is a slash course (a course for grads and undergrads), which is just fine, but the P&C ecology class is a 600 level class and will likely be more challenging. Many of the courses that the Biology Department offers to grad students
are slash courses, so that makes me
inclined to take as many of the relevant grad only courses as possible.
The choice between the two is also a choice between zooming in and zooming out. In the plant physiology class I would look at the fine-scale functioning of plants, whereas in pop. and community ecology, I would look at the large-scale functioning of species and communities. The plant physiology class would be a nice foundation to build on and is probably going to be very concrete and applicable to what I want to research, but the P&C ecology class will give me the bigger picture background that I don't feel like I have right now. The P&C class also goes into modeling, something I have very little knowledge of at this point.
I'm consulting some professors, but now having seen the syllabus for P&C ecology, I'll probably go with that one.
