IB 109: Insects and People (fun course!)

I’m May Berenbaum, advisor to the LAS IPS Entomology students. I’m writing in the hope that you can tell your advisees about my course, IB109, Insects and People, a course that satisfies the General Education Natural Science and Technology requirement.  There are *plenty* of openings (way too many)! The course can be taken with (4 h) or without (3 h) a lab.

Why take it?  In the class, students can learn about locust plagues, silk and silkworms, honey and wax, praying mantis style kung fu, insect aphrodisiacs, lice, plague, sacred scarabs, zombie cockroaches, killer bees, and insects in art, law, music and movies, among other topics…
For an extra hour of credit, take the lab–activities include honey-tasting, insect eating, field trips, beeswax candlemaking, cochineal tie-dyeing and CSI-style maggot hunts…

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve won a few teaching awards–the 2006 Entomological Society of America Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2010 LAS Distinguished Teaching Award, and I was also the nominal inspiration for “Dr. Bambi Berenbaum” of the X-Files episode “War of the Coprophages” (about alien killer cockroaches).