General Information

Molecular Foundations of Medicine
Fall 2008

Lectures
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8:30 –10:00 am, Moore Auditorium
(See syllabus for exceptions to this location)
Class begins promptly at 8:30. Students should plan on arriving and seating themselves a few minutes before this to avoid disruptions after lectures have begun. Class participation is encouraged. Often times, if one student has a question about a concept, many other students have the same question. Thus, asking questions directly of the lecturers can be a “public service” to your classmates and provides the lecturer with the opportunity to clarify the material for the entire class.

Text
Molecular Foundations of Medicine represents a combination of basic biochemistry and cell biology. The concepts taught in this course are fundamental and they underlie the molecular basis of medicine. Much of the material covered in the class is not yet included in standard biochemistry or cell biology textbooks. Therefore, there is no required text for this class. However, you may find it helpful to have a textbook readily available for reference. For this purpose, I recommend the 6th edition of Biochemistry by Berg, Tymoczko and Stryer and Lodish’s Molecular Cell Biology. If you already have a good biochemistry or cell biology textbook, they may also be used. If you have not had any previous training in this area, I strongly recommend that you purchase these textbooks as they provide much of the basic information that we will build upon in class. The handouts provided by each lecturer serve as the de facto textbook for the course.

Handouts
Handouts will be provided to the students prior to each block of lectures either by distributing them in class or placing them in student mailboxes. Separate folders will be set up next to the medical student mail boxes for handouts for undergraduate/graduate students. If, for any reason, you fail to get a set of handouts, please obtain a set from my secretary, Anna Blanchard, in room 2901 South Bldg.

Web Pages
Molecular Foundations of Medicine maintains two web pages—one on Lotus Notes, the medical school’s password protected network, and a second one on the department of biochemistry server that is accessible via the Internet.  The Lotus Notes web page contains the syllabus as well as some of the PowerPoint presentations used by individual lecturers.  In addition,  the quizzes and exams from last year's class are posted to give you an idea of what to expect  on this year’s exams.  Lotus notes requires that each student have an account on the network.  Medical students are automatically given such accounts.  Undergraduate and graduate students should see me to have an account  set up if they wish to access this site. 

A separate and more extensive web page for Molecular Foundations of Medicine is maintained on the department of biochemistry server.  You can go directly to the site using the address: https://bmbcourses.wustl.edu/.  (Note that this is a secured server.)  Click on Molecular Foundations of Medicine and use your username and password to login.  The site can also be accessed from my laboratory webpage (www.biochem.wustl.edu/pike/).  Once there, click on the “Teaching” icon and then select Molecular Foundations of Medicine from the list.  

On this departmental web site, I will post the syllabus along with electronic versions of the PowerPoint slides and handouts from all the lecturers plus any lecture notes that faculty members provide.  Please note that due to incompatibilities between systems, all files will be provided as pdf files.  Other resources available include old tests and quizzes as well as articles relevant to particular lectures.  The quizzes (see below) will also be accessible from this site and answers to all quizzes and exams will be posted here.  Access to this site will require a username and password.  You will receive a sheet of paper with the necessary information in your mailboxes.

Grades
Your grade has three parts: the midterm exam, the final exam and the bi-weekly quizzes.

Exams: The midterm and final exams are 3-hour in-class exams. They are composed of a 100 multiple choice questions. Examples of exams from previous years are available on both of the MFM web sites. 50-question practice midterm and final exams will be available on the departmental website for you to use as a study aid.

Bi-weekly quizzes:During the semester, there will be 4 quizzes, roughly one every 3 weeks.  These will be composed of 25 multiple choice questions covering the class material from the previous ~3 weeks.  The quizzes are to be completed online via the MFM web site.  Quizzes will be posted Friday morning at 9 am and will remain available for completion until Tuesday at 9:00 am.  As a trial this year, the system is set up to allow a student to take the quiz two times.  The grade assigned to the student will be the average of the two attempts.  You can take the quiz only once if you are happy with your first grade.  Note that under this regime, you will receive a score on your quiz immediately after you take it but will not be given the correct answers.  (You’ll have to look over your notes between tries to determine where you had problems.)   A schedule for these quizzes is included in the general information packet.  

Please note that once you have called up the quiz, the system will record it as an attempt regardless of whether you answer any questions. Therefore, you should only log on when you are ready to take the quiz.  Do not log on to check your password or see if the quiz is posted.  Doing so will result in the assignment of a zero for your first attempt.  I will reset your account once due to technical difficulties such as log-in problems or computer crashes.  Subsequent ‘glitches’ will be handled at my discretion.

Quizzes are to be taken closed-book by individual students.   A group effort in quiz-taking is not permitted.  Students who take the quiz early are asked not to distribute information regarding the contents of the quizzes.  These quizzes are to be done on the honor system and I expect it to be rigidly adhered to.  

Failure to take a quiz during the time that it is available on line will result in a grade of 0 for that quiz.  No exceptions will be made for travel, visits etc. since the quizzes can be accessed from anywhere and done at any time of day.  Excuses related to illness or other personal problems will be considered on a case-by-case basis but will require documentation by the Associate Dean for Student Affairs.

Medical Student Grades:
Molecular Foundations of Medicine is graded on a pass/fail basis for first year medical students. To pass Molecular Foundations of Medicine, you must achieve a score of 65% on each of the two exams plus accumulate 65% of the total points (78 out of 120 possible points) on the bi-weekly quizzes. A student may retake any one exam or the quiz set during the semester to improve their grade. However, if a student scores below 65% on any two of the components of the grade, they will receive a failing grade for the class.

Undergraduate/Graduate Student Grades:
Undergraduate and graduate students taking Molecular Foundations of Medicine will be graded separately from medical students, on their own curve, and will be given letter grades. Because of the need for letter grades and the separate curving of grades for these students, there will be no exam retakes. The final grade will be curved and will be based on the overall points accumulated by a student relative to the points accumulated by other students in this category.

If students have specific questions regarding a particular lecture, they can ask the TA’s for clarification during the regularly scheduled review sessions. Alternatively, they can contact the faculty member who gave that lecture to have their question addressed directly. If you have difficulty with an entire set of lectures, please contact the lecturer during or immediately after the time block in which they have lectured to get some additional explanations and more guidance on what and how to study their material.

Students who are consistently scoring below 70% on their quizzes or who feel that they are having persistent difficulty with the class material are strongly urged to contact Dr. Pike for an individual tutor. Tutors are provided at no cost to students and can be used as a resource continuously through the semester or only for help studying during exam periods. Please note that tutors can help explain specific material and general concepts on which you have questions but they cannot recapitulate entire lecture blocks.

The Cori Prize
The Carl F. and Gerty T. Cori Prize in Biochemistry was established by the Department of Biochemistry to honor Carl and Gerty Cori, two Nobel prize-winning scientists who carried out their research in the Department of Biochemistry at Washington University. Each year, the department presents the Cori Award to the top student in the medical school biochemistry class. The top student will be determined by the total of the grades received on the midterm and the final.  Quiz grades will not be counted towards the Cori Prize.  The prize is $250 and is awarded at the medical student awards luncheon in December of the following year.