Creative Inquiry Experience: Spring 2014

Hello Everyone, thanks for finding your way through the bowels of the internet to my blog! Here I'll be discussing my field work and other wildlife related activities while I try to save the world one little stream at a time. This is my first post and the structure of the site is still a work in progress.

While at Clemson this semester I am leading a team of 8 undergraduates through a program called Creative Inquiry (CI). CI offers undergraduates the opportunity to become actively engaged with a professor or graduate students research projects. They help me in the field, but do much more than that. This program is special because students are expected to design their own research questions relevant to my work and use my data along with supplementary data geared towards their work to answer these research questions. Below is a picture most of my class. Aren't they just adorable and intelligent looking?

These students are attempting to answer questions ranging from everything to salamander habitat preference, macroinvertebrate prey items, stream flow, and effects of vegetation. My research project is geared towards assessing the long term effects of exurbanization, but I will go more in depth with this in later posts.

CI is an awesome opportunity that really helps develop our next generation of scientists. I strongly advise any undergraduate in Wildlife or a similar to field to consider a CI course to augment their educational experience.

Thanks again for checking out my page, I'll be sure to post more in the coming weeks!