To help you further improve your understanding of each histological topic, I have placed questions in each lab exercise, with place for you to provide answers. Doing this will help insure that you meet the Learning Objectives for the exercise. Lab exams will be designed to determine how well you have met the objectives listed with each lab exercise. You will be expected to recognize and know the basic information on the structures listed with the electron micrographs and slide(s) assigned for study in each exercise.

Students in histology labs find that it is sometimes helpful to draw or sketch the appearance of certain microscopic structures, such as the arrangement of cells in a specific tissue or part of an organ. We have placed an extra page with each laboratory exercise in the Guide to allow plenty of space for notes and drawings. Taking the time to sketch and label the parts of the more complex tissues we will study during the semester will almost certainly improve your recognition and understanding of the structures. To help you further in studying the material, we have also included with most of the laboratory exercises unlabeled drawings of structures with names of important components to be identified on the drawing and on your specimens.

The guides for the laboratory exercises in the course were written with help from the individuals who have taught the labs in recent years, including Susan Wilhoit and Sue Childress, and I gratefully acknowledge their help. Thanks are also due to Sue for her work maintaining and steadily improving the microscope slide collections.

                                                                             Anthony L. Mescher