Ecological Society of America

Chapter Directory > Howard University

"Howard University SEEDS Chapter" » Washington DC

The aim of the Howard University SEEDS Chapter is to nurture students pursuing a professional career in environmental science through education, career development, and community service. The SEEDS Chapter also seeks to strengthen the environmental science community at Howard University by allowing students to connect more easily with the many exciting opportunities provided by the SEEDS program of the Ecological Society of America.

Plans for 2007-2008

• Continue to sponsor seminars that highlight environmental research
• Continue to sponsor lunch receptions that allow students to interact with these speakers
• Sponsor one or more special seminars that highlight environmental justice or another topic that is of high interest to the members of the HU SEEDS Chapter.
• We expect to sponsor a seminar with Michael Jahi Chappell, a PhD student in Dr. Vandermeer's lab at the University of Michigan
• Raise funds to bring Majora Carter ("Sustainable South Bronx") and Wangari Maathai ("Greenbelt Movement") to Howard
• Continue to promote Earth Day community service
• Develop more fund-raising activities to support Forest Partners International, an environmental and community aid program for Liberia

2006-2007 Activities

• October 18: "Environmental Policy and Congress: Case Study of the San Joaquin River Restoration Project"Seminar
  Pervaze Sheikh, Resources, Science, and Industry Division, Congressional Research Service
• Jannuary 24: "The evolution of elaborate sexual display in bowerbirds" Seminar
  Gerald Borgia, Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
• February 21: "A grasshopper and its beneficial drug source: the African story of Zonocerus variegatus and the neophyte Chromolaena odorata" Seminar
  James Timbilla, Crops Research Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Kumasi, Ghana
• March 28: "The influence of multiple, interacting global changes on plant communities" Seminar
  Elsa Cleland, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, CA
• April 11: "Environmental Justice and biodiversity conservation in the tropics" Seminar
  John Vandermeer, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
• April 23: "Microbes in the gut of beetles: A comparison of mushroom and wood- ingesting beetles" Seminar
  Meredith Blackwell, Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• We organized activities related to Earth Day, including a screening on campus of "An Inconvenient Truth" and advertising volunteer community service activities sponsored by the Alice Ferguson Foundation, the Anacostia Watershed Society, and the US Park Service
• River cleanups of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers
• Invasive plant removal at Magruder Park in Hyattsville
• Tree planting along Rock Creek

Faculty Advisor

Mary A. McKenna, PhD
Associate Professor of Biology
Biology Department
Howard University
415 College Street NW
Washington DC 20059