Deborah Mowshowitz

while the workload was pretty light, this was by far my least favorite class. she would basically just review the week's lecture through a slideshow and have a boring, surface-level activity at the end about what we learned. she wasted a lot of time sorting people into groups and going on and on with the slides, so i felt like i didn't absorb anything she was saying. as someone who is not studying stem, i felt totally unprepared for the midterm because the questions she was giving us were not representative of the caliber of those on the exam. we had a pretty good sub one day and that's when i realized how bad the regular classes were. that being said, dr m is a very nice lady! she is super open for office hours/questions and responds to emails very quickly. she also brings snacks, which helps.

I am a former postbac who linked into medical school. I am writing now in hopes of giving prospective students my retrospective hope and advice. While taking Professor Mowshowitz's intro biology course did prepare me for the course content in medical school, it made me recall biochemistry with a specific unease. Coming into Columbia with no biology background, and looking back on the experience now, one of the long-term effects of experiencing this course the way I did was to plant a seed of dread in the subject matter, which I am now spending dedicated effort to undo. Students in this biology course perpetuated an atmosphere of constant alarm. Professor Mowshowitz's lectures were illuminating, but overshadowed by her trademark multiple choice examinations. Each exam was a jigsaw puzzle, and your learning experience doesn't need to be this way. What I wish I had done more of is to consciously seek joy in learning the clinical relevance of each topic early on, much earlier than medical school. Hidden behind each peril to my GPA was a fascinating world of molecular biology that I wish I had embraced. While this optimism may not improve your immediate score, it may salvage your relationship with the subject for the future. In terms of scores, some students will do well, and others will not. You are all capable individuals. Please remember this as you navigate school life at Colum…

as a successful medical student in a highly ranked US MD school i want to come back to address the stupidy regarding rumors about this class. 1: Not a single admissions comittee member of any medical school cares who you take intro bio with (they do care about your gpa though), 2: It will not prepare you for the MCAT as much as having more free time for practice questions will. 3: It will have no bearing on your clinical performance, to say otherwise is a complete joke and shows no knowledge of what medical training actually entails . 4: you'll have much harder classes in med school, if you need an academic challenge don't worry you have plenty ahead of you. After struggles in Gen Chem I tried taking this course but found the exams to be unreasonably difficult for intro biology. I switched out of this class to Barnard and loved it. We learned anatomy as well which was helpful for the mcat and year 1 of medical school. She is a great teacher and lecturer that's true, but Its really only one class. Make your focus to get into med school first and try to enjoy your undergrad years.

Word of advice: DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH ORGO. PERIOD. ACTUALLY, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH ANY OTHER DIFFICULT/EXTREMELY TIME CONSUMING CLASSES. I finished freshman year with a strong GPA, so I got overconfident and opted to take this class along with orgo, with the plan of taking my MCATs earlier. BIG MISTAKE. I'll probably have to put off taking the MCATs and take some time to pull up my GPA after this class (and possibly orgo) completely destroys it. If you want to take bio with mowsh and earn a semi-decent grade, make sure it's the only time consuming/difficult class you're taking. That said, the material itself isn't impossible to understand. But be warned, you need to devote a shitload of time to her problem sets. And yes, DO ALL THE PROBLEMS!

I just completed this course as a second semester freshman planning to major in Biology, and I don't think any teacher has ever taught me more than Dr. Mowshowitz. Dr. Mowshowitz does her utmost to help you learn the material. She is an excellent lecturer who explains the concepts very clearly and rarely, if ever, leaves anything for you to learn independently. Before every lecture, she posts notes online that contain everything she hopes to cover, and after every lecture she posts recordings of the lecture for anyone to listen to. Basically, there is absolutely no reason for you to be clueless when exam day comes. In fact, I learned enough just from the lectures that studying for tests was just a matter of rereading the notes to remind myself what she'd said. The only times I really needed to thoroughly review the material and take notes while studying were when we had Dr. Heicklen as a guest lecturer. The material covered is also a great deal more in depth than high school biology classes, and if you're here to learn rather than to get a high GPA, then you shouldn't even think about getting an exemption from this class. As far as her exams go, Dr. Mowshowitz has gone to great lengths to make this class useful to you in the long run. Most biology classes have you memorizing mountains of material for tests so that you can promptly forget them afterwards -- I took Environmental…

I know you will probably get many similar comments (considering I have read this over and over again on CULPA)....but I feel the need to express my concern for Dr. M's lack of compassion for her students. She is aware that I have a learning disability and says to me "Some people just aren't meant for medicine".... She followed this by saying maybe I should look into philosophy or something like that.... even though she has no idea of my other grades or reason for studying neuroscience.luckily I am a G.S student and can handle that type of discriminatory and negative feedback. I still left her office utterly dejected and questioning my entire purpose at this school and that maybe I shouldn't have come here, what I'm doing with my life ect. I have taken BIO 1 at another university and received an A...her response: "That's like telling your French teacher that you've already taken Spanish". So she is aware that her course is like no other intro bio class... and I would hope that she could realize that maybe her class isn't the 'end all be all' say in whether or not a student is fit more studying science? Since meeting with her, my zeal and love for biology has diminished greatly. I wish her words didn't cause this, and as much as I want to say "I'll show you"... and am saying "yeah...maybe she is right. I have a serve learning disability, and am probably too handicapped to contin…

Dr. Mowshowitz is a terrible teacher. While her lectures are occasionally interesting, she is nasty to her students. I always thought it was the duty of a professor to 'set their students up for success'. Dr. M sets you up for failure. I didn't do as well as I wanted on the first exam of the semester. I went to her an explained my study habits and asked for some advice on how to improve. She essentially went through my exam and told me that I should have known the things I got wrong and offered no advice. I did all the homework problems, and I did them in groups and alone. Normally, one would assume that the homework would provide practice for the exam, or at least show you the importance of topics (for example, more problems on one subject would mean it was more important). This wasn't the case. The one problem made of terms she only mentioned once (I searched through the lecture notes) was a quarter of the exam. I sought out tutors for the finals. The ones she had listed for the most part didn't know the material. When I mentioned what I was feeling in the course (that the material given to me had little baring on the exam), they all understood and said that most of their students felt the same. I think this course can be summed up by a conversation I took part in earlier in the semester. I was talking with two students, one that didn't really put in much effort, and another…

Be warned that although this class sounds easy (for "non-scientists") it isn't. The actual subject is easy but the way it is sometimes presented or tested is very confusing. The most difficult thing I struggled with was the wording of the questions on mini-exams and homework. They are very ambiguous and unclear. However, she is a very nice person and will answer all your questions. She answers emails quickly and takes participation into account. Overall, I don't think I would recommend this class though. If you like biology, take a reall class and if you just want to get easy credits for the science requirements, this is not the way to go. The class is somewhat philosophical. Discussing evolution and questions relating to it was interesting.

PLEASE AVOID IF YOU ARE NOT GOOD AT SCIENCE. she does not explain most of the things well and personally left me even more confused than before coming to her class. however that is not to say that she is not a kind person. she brings snacks and she will want to help you if you go to her office hours, however I do not think that she is good at summarizing and giving you the essential information to understand the concepts we learn in the lecture.

Take Intro Bio at Barnard. There is absolutely nothing else you need to know about this teacher.