WORCESTER, Suzanne E.*; WOOD, Swarup E.; PERRY, Ren�e R.; KIBAK, Henrik: Retaining Students In Biology: Enriching Introductory Courses With Ecological Restoration Projects

Many students interested in becoming biologists become discouraged by core science courses. These courses present a large amount of detailed content that appears to have no relevance to students’ interests. In addition introductory courses often appear unrelated to each other. To increase retention of students into upper division courses, and to increase interest in pursuing scientific fields by non-majors, we have developed an investigative laboratory study of a local degraded wetland. Our goals are to give freshmen and sophomores a taste of doing real science (rather than cookbook labs) and to have them engage in applied projects where their work makes a difference. Students work in small groups to design projects that relate to the long-term monitoring of a wetland in the process of restoration. A web site database encourages students to integrate chemistry questions (such as water quality) with biology questions (such as plant and animal abundance). This lab requires three or more lab sessions with at least one field trip. Feedback suggests that students are more enthusiastic about introductory chemistry and biology as a result of this lab. Students also appear to be becoming better at thinking like scientists after these applied, project-based experiences. We will present how we’ve set up this lab in introductory chemistry, introductory biology and a non-majors science course; show the effects on student learning; and discuss some examples of how this model may be applied at other institutions.