Why We Have Field Stations: Reflections on the Cultivation of Biologists

摘要

For a resident of the state of Nebraska, the Cedar Point Biological Station (CPBS), located in scenic limestone bluffs below Kingsley Dam, an earth-filled artificial mountain that impounds a lake 35 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide, is a bargain in American higher education, in three weeks a student can earn four credits of upper-division coursework, get original research ewperience, and, most importantly-especially in an educational milieu increasingly characterized by electronic content and electronic course management-get his or her hands on some live wild plants and animals in an appropriate ecological context. This encounter with nature is typically the first for our high-performer premed students on academic scholarships, who regularly attend CPBS after their junior year. The life-long impact of such experience includes lost naivete with respect to living systems, appreciation of the relationship between environment and health, and, for some, a career choice lending to professional science.