Syllabi: BIO 321;IS 103
Application Form
Answers to Common Questions
Travel Equipment List
Annotated Readings List
 Destinations
2006 Participants
Participant Information Request

Life in the Tropics

Biology 321 & International Studies 103

Dr. Richard Legg, Department of Biology
Dr. Joan Trapp, Department of Music
Welcome to the home of an international program featuring Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands as destinations for our Biology Department field course, Bio 321.  Credit for IS 103, International Experience, also is associated with this travel.  Our May 2006 offering in Ecuador included stops along the coast, in the high Andes, the lowland rain forest of northern Ecuador's Oriente, and an excursion to the Galapagos Islands.

Cloud Forest 

Leafcutter Ants at work

New!  A small gallery of images from our 2006 trip.

A Galapagos tortoise

 

Information

Further information about this course can be obtained by reviewing materials from the 2006 offering.  They may be accessed from the links above and include a general itinerary, projected costs, and application process.  As we plan our next trip, please note that all documents, dates, costs, and even the course itself are tentative until a final course student group and travel plan are approved.. If you wish to be kept informed of developments regarding this course, please contact Dr. Rich Legg by email, by phone at 563-333-6369, or visiting his office at 210 Lewis Hall.  For general information about SAU Study Abroad courses, contact Dr. Ryan Dye, Director of International Study programs. 

Why travel?  Why go to the tropics?

This course is being designed to meet several broad goals.  Among the most important are the following:

  • to provide you with an opportunity to visit and learn about the most diverse and dynamic ecosystem on the planet, the new world tropics

  • to provide you with an opportunity to engage yourself as a scientist in observing organisms in their natural environments and to conduct basic experiments in the field

  • to provide you with the opportunity to reflect upon many questions basic to an understanding of nature - why are there so many species?  how did they come to exist?  what factors influence their distribution and abundance?  how do individual species function in their environments, and adapt to their fellow inhabitants?

  • to provide you with the opportunity to experience a disappearing relic of a formerly great expanse of tropical rainforest so that your thinking about environmental and conservation issues can be informed by personal experience

  • to provide you with an international cultural experience that will enable you to move closer to becoming a global citizen

 

 
 

Walking Palm