Academics

The Integrated Science Education Initiative seeks to enhance students' experiences with science in order to achieve overall increased learning and comprehension. Following are our specific educational goals for the initiative.

- Stimulate student interest in the sciences

- Make simple class exercises more meaningful by putting them into the larger context of an interdisciplinary and long-term data set

- Expose students to the interrelationships of science disciplines, how they interface in the natural environment, and the relevance of variations in environmental conditions.

- Teach students a progression of investigative skills needed for field study

- Simplify logistical conditions to make it feasible for faculty to offer students significantly increased opportunities for science field study through all four years of the science curriculum.

- Provide students with opportunities to develop independent, long-term science studies that they can conduct and monitor both during laboratory sessions and on their own time.

- Establish a shared GIS database to encourage interdisciplinary projects and collaboration, and make that database available to faculty at other institutions for comparative purposes.

 

To achieve these goals the ISEI group has initiated a course that brings together many of the sciences into an interdisciplinary field course, Field Methods for Environmental Scientists.

The primary study area for the course is the 300-acre Little River Nature Area on the edge of campus many know as the Kip Tract. It offers richly diverse ecosystems for study, including the Little River, its watershed and oxbow ponds, deciduous and coniferous forests, old-growth meadow, and marshy wetlands. Other areas are visited as class time allows.