At NC State, there are a number of unique classes that a student can take throughout their years of enrollment at state. One of these classes that stands out from the standard GEP requirements is The Biology of Love and Sex.
Lisa McGraw, an assistant professor of biological studies, has taught this course since 2012. McGraw understands the curiosity that the name of the course instills in students and uses the name to bring them in to teach them more.
“The title of the class is love and sex, but it really [makes] you have to learn science,” McGraw said. “How to read scientific articles, how to interpret experiments and critique experiments.”
This class has a unique structure in which the students themselves choose the materials that are discussed in the class, giving it a unique style of discussion. McGraw said that due to this discussion style, the class’s syllabus is rarely the same from semester to semester.
“I kind of start out the first couple weeks lecturing, giving them ideas of what the class is about, and then they really get to go with it, and they get to pick the topics that they’re interested in that fall under some kind of umbrella of [the] biology of love and sex,” McGraw said. “Some people study, they look at papers on birds and nesting behavior, and then some people look at really detailed human medical behaviors and psychology papers. It depends on the students, how the class goes every semester. It’s always changing.”
Amber Johnson, a fourth-year studying biological sciences, has taken this course in a previous semester. She remembers the class as an excellent way of understanding different mating behaviors and the psychological effects that sex and love have on humans and different animals.
“Obviously, it was The Biology of Love and Sex, so it was on love and sex,” Johnson said. “Kind of taking a more biological perspective, maybe more of a neuroscience and endocrinology kind of perspective. So, looking at how neurotransmitters, how hormones, how the concentration of what hormone it is, how it affects sexual behavior, because sex is a behavior. We looked at it in humans, animals and just talked about it many different ways.”
The class tends to be smaller in size, and with the class being discussion-based, it leads to the students and the teacher getting to know each other quite well.
Johnson said that The Biology of Love and Sex was a class that helped give her a bigger idea of what her future could hold with a career in biology and thought that it could help anyone in the field of biology understand their future as well.
“It is an awesome class,” Johnson said. “It is a lot of fun. It gives you a bigger idea, if you’re probably going to go to further schooling, what you’re going to be doing with your research. Dr. McGraw is really great, and I feel like she would be a great reference for anyone who spends time to get to know her.”
