Presentation opportunity at ESA meeting

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Teresa Mourad

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Mar 11, 2024, 9:36:59 AMMar 11

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Hello, I am Tom Langen, Chair of the ESA Education Committee.

Are you someone who teaches undergraduate-level ecology and plan to attend the ESA Annual Meeting this year? I am preparing a special session on how ecology is taught today in undergraduate education. I am looking for panelists and attendees with experience teaching ecology in different types of institutions and with different populations of students. Maybe you teach a large class at a large university, or a small class at a small college. Maybe you teach ecology at a community college, or an MSI, or an urban institution. Maybe you teach ecology to predominately pre-health students, or to everyone as part of the general curriculum. Please consider participating in this special session. The abstract is below.

Please let me know before March 13 (Wed) if you can (Tom Langen, tla...@clarkson.edu ). Sorry for the short turnaround. Even if you are a ‘maybe’, I will be happy to hear from you.

Abstract

The undergraduate curriculum is changing in the 21st century, and so is how ecology is taught. Ecology may be imbedded in other courses, such as an introductory biology survey course, or taught as a stand-alone course required for biology and environmental science majors. Ecology may be included in general education requirements, be core to a biology curriculum, or treated as a peripheral elective. Ecology instructors may take a standard textbook survey of the topic, emphasize relevance to pre-health majors by taking a one health approach, or stress ecology’s relevance to human welfare by focusing on ecosystem services. Ecology courses may integrate traditional ecological knowledge, human community relevance, and course-based undergraduate research experiences. In this special session, the ESA Education Committee will bring together educators from a diversity of institutions to discuss how ecology is taught and to whom it is taught at their institutions. The objectives of the session are to bring ecology educators with different experiences and perspectives to discuss what is done now to teach ecology, and identify what should be done to keep ecology available, interesting, and relevant for the education of all undergraduates.

On behalf of Dr. Tom Langen,

Chair, Education Committee, ESA

Teresa

Teresa Mourad

Director, Education and Diversity Programs

Ecological Society of America