Sharing a field day with friends and colleagues

This wetland preserve is my passion. I want nothing more (and also nothing less) that to make this into a world class nature preserve on the eastern edge of New York City. This is a very personal idea but it is not something that can be accomplished alone. Building a constituency of talented folks, who work together on a share vision, is one of the “essentials’.

This week I had the chance to share ideas about the preserve with two friends and teaching colleagues. I’ve known and worked with Frank Cantelmo for 30 years and with Paula Lazrus for only a few years. Frank is an aquatic ecologist by training and a brilliant teacher of evolutionary biology and ecological thinking. Paula is a superbly creative teacher and trained archaeologist who teaches both history and science from the perspective of human induced changes to the natural landscapes. Spending the day with them, in the preserve, deciding what we can do with our different student groups makes for one of those 'unforgettable' days. We have a great deal of overlap within our student groups whether it is ES major students or beginning freshman science students. How can we work together and with our different levels of students?

We decided to run one major orientation tour and field walk with our classes early in the fall semester. I’ll focus on the preserves overall geography and its watershed character; Frank will do its ecosystems and its wonderful aquatic and estuarine nature and Paula will provide them with the human and landscape perspectives. How’s that for being interdisciplinary! When that is all said and done and the students have seen the ‘whole’ we’ll then allow them to select from a variety of structured and unstructured investigative trips and activities that we will design for them. It will be their option to join in but I’d bet that it will be the highlight of their term.

I have to add that this particular day (7-22-2010) was really hot; it also was exceedingly humid and the mosquitoes absolutely loved it; and because it is July some of the overgrowth was almost impassable. None of us escaped unscathed. So you might think that it wasn’t all that great a day. Well it was a tough day. But sharing something special with friends and colleagues tips the balance. It turned out to be one of those really great, ‘unforgettable’ days.