Our EPA-funded project to investigate the habitat quality of ecologically enhanced engineered shorelines is ready to begin! We’re working with a number of research organizations, schools and non-profits in what will be an exciting addition to the ecological knowledge of NYC’s estuarine region. Read more about the project on the project page

See the paper from Rob Reid and myself in the International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education here.

A new paper by myself and Rob Reid, examining a range of social and academic factors that might influence how students learn in the first year, entitled ‘First course at university: Assessing the impact of student age, nationality and learning style’ will be out shortly in the International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education

In our paper, we discuss how the majority of students sampled demonstrated evidence that they were ‘surface’ or ‘reproducing’ learners. This style of learning is generally characterized by factual recall and memorization, with less emphasis on conceptual understanding and integration of material across course themes. This latter, ‘deep’ approach is typically a favored pedagogical outcome, but in our first-year biology course, offered no benefits to students in terms of their academic achievement and grades. Designing curricula to encourage more comprehensive styles of learning, while at the same time ensuring students learn enough of the factual content they will need in future studies, is a continuing challenge for instructors of these broad introductory courses.

The new course Marine Conservation Ecology, co-taught with Dr Joshua Drew here in E3B, will include a field trip to Glover’s Reef Research Station in Belize. The trip will run during Spring break, from March 17-23. If you are a Columbia or Barnard student and want to find out more about the course, please contact myself or Josh, and check out the course web page.