UMEB: Environmental Biology in the Pacific Islands

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"UMEB: Environmental Biology in the Pacific Islands," based at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will train students from the Polynesian and Micronesian islands, highly under-represented in the biological sciences, to pursue professions in environmental biology. Coming from thousands of islands scattered over more than 160,00 square miles of the tropical Pacific Ocean, the UMEB interns, selected during their freshman and sophomore years, will have the opportunity to participate in environmentally relevant training and research at the University of Hawaii at Manoa or Chaminade University, a small private college near the UHM campus. The program will enroll up to seven student interns each summer, with 4 - 5 expected to continue with year-round support. As a cohort, the students will participate in a series of field trips to expose them to both nearly intact and heavily disturbed terrestrial and marine habitats and will attend lectures/discussions with participating faculty and with representatives from governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations that are concerned with environmental issues. Each student will join a research group in the laboratory of one of 11 mentors where s/he will gain hands-on research experience. With guidance from mentors, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and other undergraduates in each laboratory, each Pacific Islands intern will gain skills by apprenticeship and undertake an individual research project on a topic such as endangered species conservation, impacts of invasive alien species, and the effects of pollutants on life processes at many levels. Each student's project will include a field component, so the participants become familiar with the problem they are studying in nature, as well as bench top lab activities. Students will present their research results each year at an end-of-summer symposium; students accepted into the full year program will be encouraged to develop their projects for presentation at national scientific meetings and for publication in professional journals. Over 4 years, the program will support 8 - 12 students to the completion of bachelor's degrees after which students are expected to apply for graduate schools or environmentally relevant jobs. The present grant builds on a prior UMEB award that supported 40 Pacific Islanders in environmental research, and provided a cohort of role models for the new group of students. The newly funded program will start with an excellent group of interns who were supported and trained on the prior UMEB award."UMEB: Environmental Biology in the Pacific Islands" includes a Research Opportunity Award (ROA) that will bring six instructors from Pacific Islands community colleges to the University of Hawaii, for 6 weeks of intensive exposure and training in local environmental problems and to conduct research into potential solutions. Through field trips, visits to active research laboratories, and lectures and practical in-lab training, participants will be taught modern approaches to environmental biology and the molecular methods for examining genetic diversity at a variety of levels. They will be supplied with modern equipment for performing such studies that they will take back to their home institutions to use in training and mentoring students and carrying out relevant research. Together with student-intern training of Pacific Islanders, the ROA effort will significantly improve the capacities to of the local community colleges to train and practice sound environmental practices and remediation.This program will produce a new and somewhat unique group of culturally-connected Pacific Islanders specifically trained to serve their home islands as informed leaders in natural resource protection and restoration. Further, they will be positioned to provide information to the world on the special problems experienced in island nations relative to topics such as resource sustainability, protection of biodiversity, management of coral-reef fisheries, integrated watershed management and control of invasive species. Because many of the targeted islands have long depended on the mainland U.S. for trained scientists to fill research, management and policy-oriented positions, environmental programs have often failed due to lack of follow up from those on short term contract and because of a lack of community acceptance and involvement. For more information, contact Dr. Michael G. Hadfield (Phone: 808-539-7319; e-mail: hadfield@hawaii.edu).