Neuroscience
Neuroscience is a Science course in the CTY program. Its only prerequisite is enrollment in and passing a biology course, in CTY or in high school. Its course code is NEUR, and it is offered at Baltimore and Carlisle. In 2014, it was offered at Lancaster.
Course Description
Neuroscience is an introduction to the study of the brain, from the cellular level to the nervous system itself.
Class History
Introduction to Neuroscience was designed and taught by Kurt Thoroughman and Matthew Belmonte in 96.2 at Johns Hopkins. Thoroughman and Belmonte returned in 1997 to teach at Session 1 and Session 2, respectively. Neither of them returned to CTY in subsequent years.
The course as designed by Thoroughman and Belmonte is described at http://www.mattababy.org/~belmonte/Teaching/Neuroscience/.
From 10.1 to 11.2 at Carlisle the class was taught by John Rutter. In 11.1 and 11.2 it was TA'd by Josh Da Silva, otherwise known as Tah or Yoshi.
In 11.1 at Carlisle the awesome Nerdy Neurons of Carlisle took the class. Cerebellum, a parody of the song Umbrella by Rihanna, was created by the Nerdy Neurons. "When the neurons fire they fire together, said we'll always be together, I said I'll always be your brain....Now that its braining more than ever, know that we'll still have each other. you can stand under my cerebellum, ellum, ellum, e, e, e.....You can run into my brain, its ok dont be afraid, come into me theres no difference in between our lobes" Dr. Rutter was famously heard to say "Theres no F***ing way these ions are going to get through this s**t", "You can, if thats how you roll", "How do you know I'm not a cleverly disguised woman", "Damn you Rutter, Damn you!", "Out of the fiery depths of hell comes a "Bawk!".
Rutter continued teaching in 13.1 at Carlisle, and the class was TA'd by Gabrielle Nichols, a former JHU CTYer(aka G-protein or GABA). This class consisted of the best people ever: Grace Lee, Alexis Onsi, Desiree Wright, Katie Goldstein, Shivani Gupta, Emily Chang, Julia Donovan, Ella Epstein, Karan Tandon, Connor Nash, AIDS (Aidan Bissel-Siders), James Mo, Sidd Kantamani, Nico Mandel, Kyle Watkins, and Nate Korb. While most of the class discussion seemed to be about cows and life in Maine, a fair bit about the brain and its cells was learned. The course is amazing and a lot of knowledge is gained about the anatomy, chemistry, and function of the brain. Rutter knows his shit, he has a PH.D in Neuroscience- many of us called him Doc for that. Great quotes continued from Rutter, such as "Oh right, right, I gotta get my heart beating again. Shit!", "Unmyelinated roller-coasters are slower", "I view the veggie display as a game of Jenga", "Pushing the fold", and "My uterus tingles thinking about it...I guess you didn't know". An epidemic of pokemon addiction hit the class and for the last three days, everyone in class was obsessed with playing pokemon on smartphones. Also, the card game of "Pres" was a classic- it was played during all breaks and a large portion of study hall. "Stay alive it's the fourth of July" became the inside joke of the class along with shouting "AIDS" whenever Aidan talked. Also, whenever Josh the T.A (or whatever he is) would appear, everyone would yell "Classic Josh". Take Neuro- It truly is amazing.
Rutter left CAR in 14. Session 1 however, was taught by Jamie White, a PhD student. She was an excellent person, and a great scientist, but she couldn't break difficult neuroscience concepts down into understandable parts, and was thus not a very good teacher. The TA Sam, on the other hand, came to the rescue quite often, and was able to explain things very well. He was also very entertaining. The best example of this would be when he was prepping a lab that required us to drug zebra fish. Sam: "Jamie, I may have overdosed the fish" Jamie: "What?? Are they dead?" Sam: "No, not dead, just um... highly paralyzed."
CAR 14.2 was taught by Dr. Paul Patton and TA-ed by Jason Saltiel. The first week was actually a living hell to the students, full of boring lectures everyday that brought some people to sleep, while others played on their phones or drew. Dr. Patton had a very slow, quiet voice, and could also be compared to the surfer sea turtle in Finding Nemo, only it was very obvious he was too old to be a surfer. Jason was a good TA, and was known to be very hipster, with his wacky socks and preppy clothing. Everyone usually relied on Jason to explain all the concepts that Dr. Patton couldn't convey during the lectures. Most of the students complained sometime during the first week to the RAs, leading to the Academic Deans Willie and Lesa to come in almost every class. It was utterly hilarious to the students to see their solemn and disgusted faces as they sat in during a usual 3 hour lecture. The administration and other instructors were looking for ways to get class interesting without getting a new teacher. So by that, they took any student suggestions for study hall time, which included reading out loud and discussion sessions outside, and lots of TED Talks. We were also somewhat in charge of teaching our fellow classmates, because Dr. Patton's teaching method was not very effective. The class rounded out to be alright, but nothing very special for a CTY class. Some highlights of the session were that we got the privilege to meet at Exist in Me in the HUB basement and that we had one class bonding, which actually bonded our class. It was too unfortunate that class bonding was on our very last activity of the session.
At Lancaster 14.1 and 14.2, the class was taught by Jessica Keesee, also known as Jess, or Keesee, or jkeesee, or the main bae. She was pretty cool, like, she played foursquare. She was super fun and could rap Iggy Azalea like no other. For 14.1, the class call was #$qua. But 14.2 was #betterthan$qua (no hard feelings 14.1). The class call for 14.2 was a call-and-response. Jess or Maia, the TA, would yell POW3RHAUS and the young whippersnappers would yell MYLK. For social media purposes, #pow3rhaus and #mylk should be used. Oh, and one more thing. IT AIN'T EASY BEIN' KEESEE!
At Lancaster 15.1, the class was taught by a very obviously unqualified - albeit sweet - teacher named Robin Weaver. Robin would more often than not be unable to answer questions that couldn't be addressed to with less than 4 words. Such questions included, "How exactly does the amygdala coordinate with the HPA axis?" to which she responded "I, um. (prolonged and awkward pause) Would someone like to answer that question?" In many cases, the students would have to resort to asking their questions and obtaining information from one of the 3 smarter students in the class who apparently knew more on the topic than the instructor. (s/o to Tieran, Andrew Dimitri, and Ben) Thusly, the class was visited numerous times by staff from the main office and the Dean of Academic life, although no changes were made.The material, though interesting, was taught in a way that often made it difficult for the students to learn it. This course would be recommended, however, as long as the instructor does not remain the same.
