U.S.-Australia Summer Research Institute in Tropical Australia

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9900386SHEPHERD This award supports the establishment of a Summer Research Institute in Australia commencing in 1999 and running in alternate years through 2003. This project grew out of a successful pilot project supported by the NSF East Asia and Pacific Program in 1998 through which twelve undergraduates and two graduate students from the University of New Mexico (UNM) spent a month in Australia engaged in research related to tropical ecology. The program will provide a diverse group of students a unique opportunity to acquire extensive knowledge of a flora and fauna of Godwanan ancestry while learning the fundamentals of field research and project design. The educational and research experience in Australia will last for just over four weeks in each alternate summer and is organized in conjunction with the University of New Mexico's General Honors Division with support from UNM's Department of Biology and a variety of Australian host groups, including the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, and the Australian Museum's Research Station at Lizard Island. The students will work in direct association with scientific researchers and conservation organizations in Australia, as well as faculty from UNM. They will conduct small, short-term research projects in ecology and biodiversity studies while traveling through several biomes of tropical and subtropical Australia. By the end of the program, each student will be prepared to work in a more independent setting, will have acquired the basic skills of a field biologist, and will have carried a research project all the way from design to both a written and oral presentation.