Biological Anthropology Curriculum @ Vassar College
ANTH 120 – Human Animal (Syllabus-Spring 2024)
ANTH 211 – Virtual Anthropology (“Intensive,” Syllabus-Fall 2023)
ANTH 223 – Primate Behavior and Ecology (Syllabus–Fall 2023)
ANTH 224 – Race and Human Variation (Syllabus–Fall 2023)
ANTH 322 – Human Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Syllabus-Spring 2024)
Retired anthropological offerings
ENST 177 – Prehistoric Perspective on Climate Change (Syllabus–Spring 2022)
ANTH 235 – Central Asian Prehistory (Syllabus-Fall 2017)
ANTH 305 – A New Human Species (Syllabus-Spring 2017)
Biological Anthropology Activities & Assignments
Lab activities create hands-on opportunities for students to learn about data collection, hypothesis testing, and other concepts. Below are links to posts describing labs I developed for various courses over the years, and which you can use in your own classes if you wish. Included also is the link to the materials from the R workshop from the 2016 American Association of Physical Anthropologists conference, which I co-organized with Dr. David Pappano.
Primate anatomy and adaptation – virtual lab (ANTH 223, 2022)
Testing socioecology theory predictions (ANTH 223, 2022)
Brain size and scaling – virtual lab (ANTH 120, 2021)
Estimating students’ brain sizes (2015)
Estimating Miocene ape body mass (2015)
Do toe bones make Ardipithecus a biped? (2014)
Primate limb proportions (2015)
Determining fossil species (2015)
Estimating hominin brain size (2015)
Chimpanzee developmental osteology (2016)
Materials from the R workshop (AAPA 2016)
Other links:
Anth 235 student-written wiki: Central Asian Prehistoric Sites (2017)
Anthropology Department website
Materials for Resampling in R Workshop (Vassar URSI program, 12 June 2020)
Lawn Chair Anthropology 
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Hi Dr. Cofran,
If you don’t mind my asking, for your Bioanthro lab activity: Primate proportions, it looks as though you are having your students use the raw MeshLab measurement and then creating indices with that. Am I interpreting that correctly? Or are you converting the raw unit measurement into mm? Apologies if this was made apparent somewhere in the documents you have uploaded, I was just curious as I am crafting something that uses similar techniques that I hope to also convert into a classroom activity. Thanks so much for any information you can give!
Best,
Jessica Skinner
Hi Jessica,
I’ll need to review this exercise (it’s syllabus time!) but I think that the measurements are already in mm. I could be wrong. Either way, if you’re making indices they will become dimensionless so it shouldn’t matter (although students may get suspicious if a marmoset has a smaller humerus than a macaque). I hope this helps!
Zach
Hi Zach,
Thanks so much for your response! I feel you, it is definitely that time again. This was a big help as I am working with some skeletal material, and most of the measurements I am conducting are dimensionless, but I was playing around with MeshLab and testing some of its capabilities and had a brainwave for using it in Lab. Here’s to a successful semester for you!
Cheers,
Jess
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Dr. Cofran,
I am a HS Biology teacher who tries to use hominid anthropology examples as data sets and to teach evolution as much as possible. I have been using 3D printed crania and mandibles for the past two years but have always wanted to dive deeper. A- May I use/modify your published labs in my classroom giving you full credit of course? B- I have had several people on twitter ask how they can dive deeper into hominids, do you mind if I publicize your page to other HS teachers on Twitter, so they can also see your labs? I would be tagging Science teachers….but you know how twitter goes. Thank you for all that you do and whatever you decide I more than understand. -Dan
Yes of course, please do use/modify the labs as you please, and I won’t turn down some good press 🙂 Thanks!