Spring 2027

Bees, Trees, Germs, and Genes: a History of Biology

The course traces how eighteenth-century agricultural, natural-history, biomedical, and molecular traditions shaped modern biology.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Lynn Nyhart

The workload included extensive reading, specific and difficult weekly quizzes, discussion posts, and papers.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify key ideas, people, places, and events in the history of biology.

  • Connect a passage of professional or popular scientific writing in biology to larger historical themes and trends.

  • Analyze similarities and differences in scientific expression across different people, genres, and time periods.

  • Explain how past ideas about classification and evolution; organismal organization; disease causation and medical intervention; and mastery of genetic machinery have shaped present-day assumptions and attitudes about biology and human nature.

Source: UW Guide 1 UW Guide 2 UW Guide 3

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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AB
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

None

  • None
HISTORY/HISTSCI/MEDHIST 132

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • None

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

LYNN K. NYHART is recorded teaching in Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2023. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records

No records available.

Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Lynn Nyhart

Professor Nyhart taught the course with care and investment in the topics, creating a supportive environment for students.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2019: 3.42 GPA, 73.5% A/AB (n=200 letter grades); Fall 2020: 3.43 GPA, 74.2% A/AB (n=198 letter grades); Spring 2023: 3.45 GPA, 75.0% A/AB (n=64 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Lynn Nyhart

The workload included extensive reading, specific and difficult weekly quizzes, discussion posts, and papers.

Past student reviews · Lynn Nyhart

Students found it frustrating that mid-weekly quizzes contained difficult questions even when all materials were reviewed, making perfect scores rare.

Topics

  • Agriculture and natural history traditions, including bees and trees.
  • Biomedicine and molecular biology, focusing on germs and genes.
  • Historical development beginning in the eighteenth century.
  • Scientific and social contexts of biological knowledge.
  • Classification, evolution, organismal organization, disease causation, and genetic machinery.

Skills

  • Identify key ideas, people, places, and events in the history of biology.
  • Connect biological writing to larger historical themes and trends.
  • Analyze scientific expression across people, genres, and time periods.
  • Explain how past biological ideas shaped present-day assumptions and attitudes.

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2023— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2023

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2023 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1185 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "6910aa673a0b0d9ba0d94c2249e4c7b1fc53358c5522da89c0d3b1d8bd904294",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}