Extra Credit

EXTRA CREDIT

All extra credit work should be submitted to your T.A. and can be submitted at any time during the quarter. We prefer email submission but hard copy is acceptable as well.

You can earn up to 100 extra credit points (equivalent to 10% of your grade) in three ways:

1. by doing extra homework problems assigned on some homeworks,
2. by attending suitable lectures and writing a report (see below), and/or
3. by reading suitable articles and writing a report (see below).

Further explanation of 2 and 3 follows.

2. Attending extra lectures

During the quarter, there will be many seminars given around the campus on climate-related topics. Although these lectures are often intended for scientists and graduate students, many of them are quite comprehensible in terms of the concepts developed in this course. They provide an excellent opportunity to learn about climate and climate change from the point of view of scientists actually engaged in the research.

For a list of upcoming, suitable lectures, see the "Public Talks" button on the home page, or check here.

To earn extra credit points (up to 10 points per lecture), you must attend the lecture and write up a description of it. Your write-up should be 1-2 pages, double-spaced and should include the following:

date, time, place, speaker, title
summary of the talk (or as much of it as you could understand)
your own comments on the talk (for example, were the points made by the speaker clear and convincing? What did you find most surprising? Did anything conflict with what you have learned in class?)
Questions that the talk raised in your mind

You should definitely take notes during the talk, but DO NOT simply turn in your notes. To earn the full 10 points, your write-up does not need to be long but it does need to be coherent and organized (for example, using complete sentences and paragraphs).

By the way, do not be afraid to ask the speaker to clarify any points you do not understand. That is one of the best ways to learn, and most speakers will be very glad to find out that an undergraduate has taken the time to attend their talk.

3. Reports
The full list of required and supplemental articles can be found in the Readings section of this website. You MUST choose an article from this list as the basis of your report. (If you want to use additional information from other sources, that is fine.)
You have two options if you are writing a report for extra credit...
i. Informal, 1-2 page write-up summarizing an article and providing your own comments and questions. This is essentially the same thing you would write up for a lecture that you attended. Points: up to 10. (Well-written summaries of challenging articles may earn more in special cases.)
ii. Formal, 5-page report following the guidelines given in the Reports section of this website. Points: You can earn up to 50 points for this, but, please take note: If you do not carefully follow the formal report guidelines, your report will be considered informal. This involves much more than just summarizing the article. You must argue a thesis and follow a specified structure. Read the guidelines and ask the instructor or T.A. if you have any questions.