Bob R. Pohlad

Transforming Ecological Science at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions through Collaborative Networks

Ecologists at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) are well positioned to form collaborative networks and make transformative contributions to the study and teaching of ecology. The spatial and temporal complexity of ecological phenomena rewards a collaborative research approach. A network of PUI ecologists can incorporate closely supervised data collection into undergraduate courses, thereby generating data across spatial gradients to answer crucial questions. These data can offer unprecedented insight into fine- and large-scale spatial processes for publications, resource management, and policy decisions. Undergraduate students benefit from the collaborative research experience as they gain experiential learning in team building, project design, implementation, data collection, and analysis. With appropriate funding, collaborative networks make excellent use of the intellectual and experiential capital of PUI faculty for the benefit of science, pedagogy, and society.

Add ecology to the pre-medical curriculum.

In their Letter “Competencies: A cure for pre-med curriculum” (11 November 2011, p. [760][1]), W. A. Anderson and colleagues endorse a proposed shift in pre-medical education toward core competencies. We believe that the specific competencies proposed by the Association of American Medical

Phenology in Higher Education: Ground-Based and Spatial Analysis Tools

New spatial analysis methods and an increasing amount of remote sensing data are the necessary tools for scaling from ground-based phenological measurements to larger ecosystem, continental, and global processes. However, since remote sensing data and tools are not straightforward to master, training at the higher education level is often necessary. Curricula and training programs linking these integral components of phenological research are sorely needed because the number of people with requisite skills in the use of a growing array of sophisticated analytical tools and collected remote sensing data is still quite small. In this chapter we provide a series of examples of field-based approaches to college- and university-level phenological education. We then guide the reader through the resources that are available for the integration of remote sensing with land-based phenological monitoring and suggest potential ways of using these resources.