UMEB: Diversity & Excellence in Environmental Biology

美国国家科学基金会资助将在佛蒙特大学生物系建立环境生物学本科生指导（UMEB）项目。生物系开发了一个整合空间统计学和环境生物学的项目，增加了少数民族学习环境生物学的机会。该计划基于社区所有成员都受益于多样性的原则，并以该部门为实施中心。个别夏季实地研究项目将以空间变异为共同主题，涵盖植物-动物相互作用、环境生理学、宿主-寄生虫相互作用、分子生态学、系统发育和群落结构等多个主题。该项目进入了早期阶段，招募了八名高中毕业生，并将他们与一名教师导师配对，进行本科教育。在四年的时间里，学生们将参与导师实验室的研究工作。该课程包括面向问题的计算机建模、统计学入门、人口遗传学和顶点空间统计学课程。学生将有一个学期的学术讨论会，致力于制定同行评审的研究建议，然后是一个夏季实地研究项目。顶点课程致力于对他们自己的数据集进行统计分析。该培训计划采用了“通过学校转型提供少数民族机会”（MOST）计划。MOST的开发是为了改变社会学课程，目的是创建一个通用的变化模式，该模式将适用于各种机构设置，并可以转移到其他学科。项目评估旨在促进与社会学MOST项目的比较，以及检查项目在其他学科中的有效性。将通过互联网（http://www.uvm.edu/~biology/?Page=Otherlinks/umeb.html）、在会议上的介绍和出版物传播方案工作和评价。欲了解更多信息，请联系Lori Stevens博士lori.stevens@uvm.edu

NSF funding will establish an Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB) program in the Department of Biology at the University of Vermont. The Biology Department has developed a program integrating spatial statistics and environmental biology that enhances minority opportunities in environmental biology. The program is based on the principle that all members of a community benefit from diversity, targeting the department as the center of implementation.Individual summer field research projects, spanning diverse topics including plant-animal interactions, environmental physiology, host-parasite interactions, molecular ecology, phylogenetics and community structure, will have spatial variation as a common theme. The program reaches early in the pipeline, recruiting eight high school seniors and pairing them with a faculty mentor for their undergraduate education. For four years, students will be involved with research going on in their faculty mentor's lab. The program includes training in problem oriented computer modeling, introductory statistics, population genetics and a capstone spatial statistics course. Students will have a semester colloquium devoted to developing peer reviewed research proposals, followed by a summer field research project. The capstone course is devoted to statistical analysis of their own dataset. The training initiative adopts the Minority Opportunities through School Transformation (MOST) program. MOST was developed to transform sociology curricula with the aim of creating a general model of change that would work in a variety of institutional settings and could transfer to other disciplines. Program evaluation is designed to facilitate comparison with sociology MOST programs, as well as examine the efficacy of the program in other disciplines. Dissemination of program efforts and evaluation will be done through the internet (http://www.uvm.edu/~biology/?Page=Otherlinks/umeb.html), presentations at meetings and publication. For more information, contact Dr. Lori Stevens at lori.stevens@uvm.edu