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Campus News
     
Your faculty and staff news since 1965
April 19, 2004
Volume 39, Number 14

Australian Outback turns UNM lab

Students learn from aborginal experts.Australia’s distinctive biology and the basics of field research are explored through the intensive, honors summer course “Biodiversity of Australia.”

Since 1998, Ursula Shepherd, Ph.D., has accompanied four groups of a dozen students each for a month-long field experience in the awe-inspiring Outback. Researchers from the land down under are “extremely hospitable, allowing our students access to their research facilities,” Shepherd said.

“It’s a course in ecological studies. Australia is a place different from any other in the world. It’s a good place for students to contrast the flora and fauna against those in the U.S., which is comparable in size,” she said.

A few non-science majors – creative writing, civil engineering, and political science students – attend. “We study conservation as well as basic science so these students have a lot to add,” Shepherd said.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, a proposal was recently submitted to extend the program. Shepherd hopes to take the next group in summer 2005. A pre-trip, one-week orientation takes place in May and a final symposium is held in August.

UNM, TVI and SIPI students who have completed one year of college and maintain a 3.2 GPA may apply for acceptance to the program. Students receive scholarships from NSF to defray a large part of the expense.

For more information, visit http://www.unm.edu/~austral/.