With financial support from the Maximilian E. and Marion O. Hoffman Foundation the Center for Conservation and Biodiversity awarded summer research internships to two University of Connecticut undergraduates in summer 1995 and in summer 1996. Working with a faculty sponsor, each intern designed and conducted independent research project in ecology, evolutionary biology, systematics, behavior, or conservation biology. Each intern received a stipend of $2500.
Dale Matheson and John Richotte of the Environmental Health Center provided support for this colloquium series on behalf of the Plant Protection Division of Ciba-Geigy for the 1994-1995 academic year. The money they provided allowed us to bring four distinguished scholars from around the country to the University of Connecticut to present a technical seminar on their research. Two scholars visited during the Fall Semester. Two visited in the spring. Each visitor meets individually with interested faculty and graduate students to discuss their research, the colloquium series was publicized in appropriate campus publications, and the colloquia were open to all members of the university and to employees of Ciba-Geigy.
Every winter the Center sponsors a workshop in conservation biology for conservation professionals, e.g., staff of state, regional, and national conservation organizations, resource management agencies, and fish and wildlife programs. The faculty for these workshops are drawn from several different departments in the University and from institutions around New England. The workshops are designed to expose conservation professionals to recent developments in biological research and to explore their implications for conservation management. In spring and summer the Center sponsors taxonomic workshops. These workshops allow experts in identification of diffcult groups, like sedges or bulrushes, to share their expertise with the staff of state heritage programs and other conservation professionals from around the northeastern United States.
In 1993 the National Science Foundation awarded us a five-year, $500,000 training grant to build on our experience in collaborative training and research. Seven disciplinary areas are included in this training program: tropical biology, conservation biology, patterns of organismal diversity, molecular systematics and evolution, processes of organismal evolution, ecology and evolution of functional diversity, and population dynamics and community diversity. Students supported by this program have studied the physiological and behavioral ecology of tropical frogs, forest dynamics (in Connecticut and Costa Rica), plant reproductive biology, thermal adaptation in desert fish, and phylogenetic relationships among deer mice.
Faculty associated with the Center have been involved in the development of several new undergraduate degree offerings. The most ambitious of these degree programs leads to a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science. Students in either the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources or the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences can choose this major. Basic course work is centered in the physical and biological sciences, but courses in environmental policy and law, environmental economics, and environmental health are also required. In addition, all students majoring in Environmental Science must satisfy additional requirements of a concentration in resource economics, environmental health, environmental chemistry, envrionmental biology, environmental geography, environmental geoscience, marine science, natural resources, or soil science. Two other degree programs may lead to either a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science. Students may choose an Environmental Biology Concentration within the Biological Sciences major, or they may choose a major in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.