Meeting Abstract

P2.69  Saturday, Jan. 5  Planting a TREE: designing a program to facilitate ecological research, outreach, education, and mentoring for underrepresented students MACIEL, J; PINON, M; ZARAGOZA, D; CORDERO, G; NEUMAN-LEE, L; STRICKLAND, J; THOL, S; WARNER, D; MITCHELL, T; REEDY, A; JANZEN, F*; Iowa State Univ.; Iowa State Univ.; Kelly High School, Chicago; Iowa State Univ.; Utah State Univ.; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; Iowa State Univ.; Univ. Alabama, Birmingham; Iowa State Univ.; Kelly High School, Chicago; Iowa State Univ. fjanzen@iastate.edu

There is a serious dearth of female and minority representation in the sciences. To help remedy this problem in the field of ecology, we carefully developed a program called TREE (Turtle Camp Research and Education in Ecology). We seeded the program primarily with an economically and racially diverse group of high school students from rural Iowa and Illinois, as well as Des Moines and Chicago, along with undergraduate and graduate student mentors from five different institutions across the country. Participants converged at a field site known as “Turtle Camp” in June of 2007-2012 (totaling 33 high school students, 15 undergraduate students, 11 graduate students, and 2 post-doctorates over the six years). All individuals worked toward four main goals at Turtle Camp: research experience, local outreach, education, and mentoring. The program utilized the extensive local diversity in reptiles to allow students to receive hands-on experience with research and related activities. Overall, TREE provides an excellent environment for advancing interest in, and knowledge of, science and for positively influencing career plans of the participants, the vast majority of whom were female and/or minorities. We hope that this program can serve as a model to help other organizations develop programs to expose students from diverse background to the benefits of ecological research, outreach, education, and mentoring.