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Final Report on

Pew Midstates Science and Mathematics Consortium Conference

“Effective Use of a Field Station for Undergraduate Education
In a Changing Liberal Arts College Environment”

Held from September 30 – October 2, 2005

At Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois

Meeting Highlights

The meeting began on the evening of Friday, September 30 with a dinner at the Landmark Café in Galesburg. Afterwards, the group retired to the Prairie Inn where we had a brief introductory meeting in which we introduced ourselves to each other and discussed our reasons for attending the meeting.

We spent Saturday October 1 at the Green Oaks Field Research Station.
The day began with a presentation by Dr. Stuart Allison of Knox College who suggested a set of initial questions for us to consider during the workshop. The questions were as follows:
• How do we increase educational use of a field station?
• How do we attract new users to a field station?
• How do we balance a field station’s role as a nature preserve with different uses?
• Are there ways field station users at different colleges and stations can/should interact more?
• How do we attract more funding for field stations?
• How do we increase the value of field stations to the entire college community?
He also gave a short slide show highlighting the history of development and use of the Green Oaks Field Research Station.

Next Dr. Vince Eckhart of Grinnell College gave a presentation entitled “Models of Undergraduate Use of Field Stations for Science.” Much of his presentation focused on efforts to develop a new field station building at Grinnell’s Conard Environmental Research Area and how various programs at Grinnell take advantage of the field station. Vince noted that while the field station provides another place to work which is valuable in itself, it is critical that the academic work at the field station be integrated into the college curriculum. At Grinnell this has happened in two ways. First, the biology department developed a new inquiry based curriculum and the field station is used to introduce first year students to doing biological research in a field setting. Second, Grinnell has developed a Center for Prairie Studies which takes a larger picture look at Grinnell’s location, focusing on the unique properties of being a college located in the prairie region. The Center for Prairie Studies uses the field station for some activities, in particular outreach to the entire college and also to the local community.

The second presentation was by Dr. Jon Wagner of Knox College. Jon’s presentation focused on how Knox has developed a unique interdisciplinary program, the Green Oaks Term, in which students are in residence at the Green Oaks field station for an entire 10 week term. During the Green Oaks Term students take all of their courses at the field station. The courses cover a broad range of academic areas that might generally be considered to be nature studies. The courses are entitled: The Natural History of Green Oaks; Culture, Community and Place; and The Natural Imagination. Jon showed a video created during the Green Oaks and discussed the challenges and successes of such a program.

The third presentation was by Dr. Greg Murray of Hope College. Greg gave a presentation entitled “Ways to Interact and Share Data More Effectively Among Field Stations.” Greg focused on both the challenges of using Hope’s field station, which has no developed facilities, and also ways to share data via web-based storage of data. Greg discussed a national program, Project NEON (the National Ecological Observatory Network) which is attempting to coordinate data sharing on a continent-wide basis. He discussed possible projects that Pew field stations might undertake so that all schools are collecting data in a common way on common problems. He also noted that large universities are dropping laboratories with field components so that soon liberal arts colleges may be the only colleges offering field experiences to their students. Thus it seems even more important to make effective use of our field stations to train the next generation of field scientists.

We toured the Green Oaks field station. After some time naturalizing, we returned to Schurr Hall at the field station and broke up into small groups to discuss the points raised in the earlier presentations. After dinner we heard from the small groups. All agreed that it was key to increase visibility of field stations to the larger college community in order to increase institutional interest in the facilities and to attract more and different users to the field stations. It is especially difficult but important to attract non-traditional users to field stations (i.e. users who are not primarily field scientists).

The next morning we met at the Knox College campus where Dr. Stuart Allison of Knox College summarized the conference’s main points of agreement and lead a final discussion of where we might go in the future and how we can maintain contact and interaction among the Pew field station users. We first returned to our initial questions and then considered whether we had been able to answer them or not. The final conclusions were as follows:
How do we increase the value of field stations to the entire college community?
• To increase institutional commitment, we must increase visibility to institution
• Host events for students, faculty, alums, bring development people out
• Make use of student volunteers - docents, work crews, create sense of pride and belonging
• Stress unique nature of field education - being lost at major universities, still strong at liberal arts colleges

How do we increase educational use of a field station?
• Encourage others (current non-users) to visit and brainstorm with them
• Stress sense of rapport that develops with students via field work
• Share ideas of how other non-traditional field station users use the facilities

How do we attract new users to a field station?
• Encourage others (current non-users) to visit and brainstorm with them
• Share ideas of how other non-traditional field station users use the facilities
• Basically the same problem as previous question

How do we balance a field station’s role as a nature preserve with different uses?
• We didn’t really discuss this question, other than to note that a tension exists in terms of defining role of field station and proper use of the facilities - answer may be unique to each situation

Are there ways field station users at different colleges and stations can/should interact more?
• Yes
• We noted several possible joint ecological projects that might be possible
• Primary unifying feature of all them is ability to post data on web and share it via electronic media
• Perhaps meet in spring to make more concrete plans for such projects

How do we attract more funding for field stations?
• That is the million dollar question - we have no good answers yet

Follow up?
• Meet in the spring?
• Share field station websites and course syllabi via pewscimath
• Keep in contact to continue exchange of ideas

There was considerable interest in keeping in contact and meeting again in the future. Greg Murray volunteered to being collecting URL’s for websites and posting a listing of what is available on the web. It was agreed that the Pew website would be a good place to host a listing of those websites so that Pew field station users can easily find each other.

Overall the workshop seemed to be a success and lead to many fruitful discussions.

The Pew Midstates Science and Mathematics Consortium consists of 11 liberal arts colleges and 2 research universities. The Consortium seeks to promote effective collaboration among faculty at the member institutions; to improve undergraduate science and mathematics education; and to assist with the research efforts of the faculty at the undergraduate colleges and of the undergraduate students at all of the member institutions.

The Consortium coordinates activities including symposia on undergraduate research, faculty development workshops, and a speaker series through which individual faculty members visit other member schools to share information.