Hello, all. I'm really looking forward to this class. I expect it will be like no other you have taken before! We'll get into the most diverse ecosystem on the planet, the underground rainforest, in our own backyard. We'll study nutrient recycling at micro, local, regional, and biosphere levels. You'll take a hand with nature and propose a conservation/restoration project the scope and scale of which will be determined by our collective and/or individual ambition. And there will be several field trips where we document and participate in local Chicago wilderness projects. Our joint learning and contributions will project beyond the classroom of Spring07, firstly through an open wiki, 2ndly through blogs and letters to magazines, and local/regional papers (letters to the editors), 3rdly as proposals to the university, city and federal levels to get the work done. With that in hand we'll be on our way to personal, communal, and regional sustainable living setting examples for the world to see.
Send us your ideas for what you'd like to get out of this course, what experiences have brought your here, and what your current driving aspirations for change are?
http://natural.uchicago.edu/prairieecosystems
now links to a wiki, and we'll have a blog there as well. This will be our collaborative skeleton where outreach, projects, and projections are channeled. Details will follow about how to contribute and updates will be regular.
See you on the 27th.
Justin Borevitz and Geoff Morris
1 comment:
Hi!
My name is Amanda Slagel, and I am a 4th year in the college. I grew up on a small farm that is exactly 100 miles south of Chicago. I miss the country and the open space so much when I am in the city. I was looking for a bio topics class to take, and am so excited to see a class offered on prairies! The small town I went to school in was once all prairie, and now there are just bits and pieces of prairie there. My school district is actually called "Prairie Central!" My family takes a vacation every year, and whenever we misbehaved as children, my dad always threatened that our vacation would just be to Weston, IL to see the prairie grass. (Weston is only 15-20 minutes away, but has a 5-acre prairie called "Weston Cemetery Prairie") I also often went to Wildlife Prairie Park near Peoria, IL with a group of my cousins as well. In other words--I have a great appreciation for the country and the prairie, since I grew up there--and I am really interested to learn all of the biology surrounding it! I guess I have just taken the prairie for granted since I have lived in/near it; therefore, I don't know much at all about the state/condition of prairies in the US. Out of this course, I am hoping to learn more about the basic biology of the prairie ecosystem, and learn what I can do in order to help with the conservation/preservation of the remaining prairies!
I look forward to meeting you soon!
:)
Amanda
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