Mountains in Juneau, Alaska.
Photo by Daniel C. Factor
A. Academic Program Leadership Experience:
The program is a 12 week intensive field experience that integrates the work from three separate academic courses centered in science and writing. The program leaders, Professors David R. Anderson and Dennis J. Taylor have more than three and two decades respectively of successful 10 week study abroad programs, and three-week intensive programs involving intensive field study.
The program is also based on the experience of organizing and completing 12 successful round-the-world trips involving multiple airline, train, ship and bus segments.
All countries and major field sites are well known to the faculty who lead the courses.
Student Lindsey Smith observing the vegetative diversity of an estuary in Juneau, Alaska.
Photo by Daniel C. Factor.
B. Purpose:
The Biomes course can be used as one of the elective courses for the Biology major when taken at the 300 level for Hiram College. It may become one of the courses that can be used as an integrative experience pending department approval. The program supports general education by fulfilling general education requirements for Natural Science, Interdisciplinary and Humanities General Education requirements. Because only juniors and seniors are encouraged to enroll in the program, these requirements meet the needs of the audience who will be graduating using Hiram's general education requirements in place for juniors and seniors graduating in 2008 and 2009.
An innovative feature of this program is that students use protocols that they have learned at the James H. Barrow field station where they work with local students and scientists in performing rapid assessments of streams and wetlands. In this way the program enhances the educational program offered at the field station by showing ways it is relevant to careers and field work beyond Hiram.
Students Steve Shaak and Lea Schaffer studying aloe along a mountain stream in Maui, Hawaii.
Photo by Daniel C. Factor.
C. Discipline:
The integrative nature of the program provides a new opportunity for students to study abroad by the diversity of courses and places included. Students enroll in three courses with the central theme, the biome concept, that first captured the imagination of J.R. Forester who accompanied Captain James Cook in 1778, and that was later described by the father of plant geography, Alexander von Humboldt, a German naturalist who proposed that similar regional climates produce similar morphological (and we find now physiological) responses. Von Humboldt's studies stand the test of time today by serving as the best example of an integrative approach to understanding science that rejects the reductionist line of thinking which has dominated much of science and education in the late 20th century. Ecologists lament the loss of natural history studies in science and indeed many descriptions of modern day science wrongly describe the study of the natural sciences to a methodology that involves only the experimental method, forgetting the long and important natural history branch of science that remains central to the study of ecology. The study of ecology in the late 20th century became more inclusive with increasing understanding of human influences on natural ecosystems and ecosystem transfers as important fields of study. This 12 week integrated program champions careful observation, accurate recording of sensory perceptions and interdisciplinary integration of ideas from different fields of study, different ecological regions of the world ,and different cultures, through the Biomes (natural science) course, Travel and Nature Writing course and Science and Literature (interdisciplinary) course.
As students work their way around the globe they add personal examples recorded in their field notebooks and essays of the characteristic appearance of life that does not require an understanding of taxonomic relationships. As we enter new regions with similar biomes, students see first-hand the way that climates of intercontinental and marine regions cause the development of similar plant communities. The course concludes in Berlin, the very city where the study of plant geography began, visiting the University, the estate and the museums made famous by the work of the von Humboldt brothers and other great German and English naturalists of the 18th and 19th centuries. We will also investigate the way in which science is interpreted through literature, i.e. the interaction of science and society through works that describe human impact on the environment and the way that science influences society and vice versa.
The subtheme of Global Warming and its impact on watersheds is only natural considering that students will be studying most of the major biome types of the earth firsthand, and will be able to examine changes that are noted from studies, oral histories gathered from local people, museums and other local knowledge sources. The impact of global warming on watersheds from scientific and personal perspectives can be recorded as part of the travel writing component of the program. The emphasis on the impact of Global Warming will be on water and watershed impacts.
Dennis J. Taylor, David Anderson
andersondr at hiram.edu
taylordj at hiram.edu
last updated 4 May 2008
Banner Photo by Mathew J. Wilson