News

Biology class merges research and conservation

In print | September 10, 2009

Macy Kozar ’10 and Jacob Socolar ’11 may be tracing the footsteps of Darwin this winter break. The two are participating in the “Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program,” a biology-philosophy program that links students from Swarthmore, the University of North Texas and the University of Magallanes in Chile together for a class about the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in Southern Chile.

After taking the class, the students will receive funding to perform independent research on a trip there during winter break.

Set in the UNESCO Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in the Southern tip of Chile, the Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program combines research and conservation with biology and anthropology. Members of the program aim to ethically research both the forests and the Yaghan, an indigenous group living in the region. Also, a portion of their research focuses on preserving both the trees and the native culture.

The conservation area is one of the world’s richest forests in terms of biodiversity. It is also a place where Darwin once formed many of his ideas.

“For biological fieldwork, there’s no other place like the neo-tropics. The biodiversity there is higher than any other place,” Socolar said.

“Darwin on his voyage of the Beagle went to Cape Horn, and in his Origin of Species, he mentions a lot of the indigenous species and a lot of the plants and animals there,” said Assistant Professor of Biology Julie Hagelin, the students’ mentor for the class. “His experiences in … the tip of South America were very influential in formulating his ideas about … evolution by natural selection. This is a part of his experiences that people don’t know as much about. Going to the Galapagos was an important part of his articles, but a lot of his ideas were from [Cape Horn].”

First funded by the Omora Foundation in Chile, the program began in 2000 with the Omora Ethnobotanical Park along with the University of Magallanes.

“The idea of the park is really to unite conservation, education, the indigenous community and research in a way that all enforce each other,” Socolar said.

The program also received funding from the United States National Science Foundation.
The project first came to Swarthmore when the co-founder of the Omora Ethnobotanical Park, University of North Texas philosophy and religion studies professor and associate researcher at the University of Magallanes Ricardo Rozzi, asked Hagelin if any Swarthmore students would be interested in participating in the program.

“I said, ‘Yes, of course!’ ” Hagelin said.

Swarthmore originally received funding for one student to participate in the course. After the biology department offered to provide additional funds through the Fields Fund, however, the number increased to two.

“The biology department thought that student learning would be best served if a student pair could take the video conference course together, rather than just a single student,” Hagelin said. “We offered to provide some added support to help fund two students simultaneously, and they agreed.”

Last year, an ad for the course was put out. Students had to fill out an application stating their previous experiences and goals for the program. Kozar and Socolar were then chosen for the program.

The actual classroom portion of the program is done via teleconferencing. Every Thursday, students will sit in front of a computer having a teleconference with various lecturers from both the United States and Chile, who will give talks on topics such as “subantarctic landscapes” and “field environmental ethics and biocultural conservation” in both Spanish and English. They will also be communicating with about 30 students from the University of North Texas and the University of Magallanes.

After the classroom learning, students will then have the opportunity to go to Chile during winter break to perform their own independent research as a part of one of the three existing projects there: “Discovering the hidden biodiversity of sub-Antarctic watersheds,” “Native and exotic species in temperate, sub-Antarctic watershed ecosystems” and “Perspectives on biodiversity, decision-making and biocultural education.”

“It’s quite possible that our student participants, on their winter break, could be on an island in the Beagle Channel on an expedition looking for a new species of plants unknown to Western scientists,” Hagelin said.

So far, the class has only met once, with a lecture from Christopher Anderson, a professor of University of North Texas. Yet the students are now seeing how special this program is.

“We’ve only had one class, and I can already see it’s so unique. It’s the only type of its kind,” Kozar said. “We hooked up online, and there was a lecturer from Chile. Each week we have scientific papers to read, and we have a lecture, and we can ask questions anytime. Some of the lectures will be presented in Spanish. We have quizzes every week, and we couldn’t take it this week because there was no English version.”

Kozar and Socolar both have high hopes for the class.

“What do I hope to get out of this class? Whatever it is they have to teach me,” Socolar said. “Really, more than anything, what I would like to get is a kind of insider’s knowledge of this area and the experience of talking local issues with an international perspective and providing a kind of understanding of how to approach these problems in an increasingly effective way. By these problems, I mean problems of conservation.”

The two students also expressed the wish to work in the area after graduation — and that is exactly what Hagelin hopes will happen.

“We’re hopefully creating a generation of informed scientists that care about conservation and culture that can work together in the future,” she said. “The only way we’re going to get these forests conserved and learn from them is to have people from both hemispheres working together.”