Ecological Society of America

Chapter Directory > Johnson C. Smith University

"JCSU SEEDS" » Charlotte, North Carolina

The purpose of the Johnson C. Smith University Ecology Club is to teach ecology to all students; to be good stewards of the planet and our community; to be better observers and questioners; to make ecology the central focus of our studies; and, to be a student of ecology all our lives.

Activities

• Mia Gordon, Inna Sokolova, and Joseph Fail, Jr. attended the UNCF SEEDS field trip to Costa Rica in the early summer. There we had excellent lessons in tropical ecology. We explored the cloud forest of Monteverde Park - as well as local farms and forests in the vicinity of the University of Georgia Tropical Field Station. We observed the impacts of humans on the natural landscape - particularly agriculture and tourism - and compared those impacts with the pristine forest of Monteverde - itself highly impacted by tourism. We learned much of the natural history of the region from local guides and from rangers of Monteverde Park. After our week of travels and exploration there we left both awed and concerned for the future of the region.
• Kristen Reynolds attended a three-day exploration as part of the ESA-SEEDS Field Trip to the Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research site, in the Appalachian Mountains in eastern North Carolina. She acquitted herself admirably there and has contributed a report of that experience. She reported she had an excellent learning experience.
• Journal Club has continued with reading and summarizing and critiquing refereed ecology recommended by advisors and including recent ecological current events.
• Inna Sokolova will be working with Kristen Reynolds this summer in her ecology laboratory at UNCC. They will be taking field trips to collect oysters along the Carolina coast for analysis of heavy metals and also for laboratory experiments on heavy metal effects on mollusks. It is hoped that with this research effort Kristen will reinforce her thoughts of ecology as a possible graduate path of further academic work. Inna has also met with this past term's SEEDS Fellows twice and tried to link them to UNCC "resource mentors" who would work with them on potential ecological research projects, possibly leading to senior capstone papers by them. Except for Kristen Reynolds this opportunity has so far not been taken up by students. Kristen has won a fellowship award from the American Physiological Society to carry on this summer work.
• Dr. Fail has been mentoring two senior paper efforts of ecological import. One of these is a paper summarizing the community structural changes within a local forest as noted by students in his ecology class over the past eight years. The other effort is a paper looking into the fates of "Thalidomide Babies."
• Our SEEDS exploration into a project associated with ecological recovery efforts in New Orleans continues. Dr. Fail took an exploratory trip with colleague Hassan Moore last January, where we met with park officials to suggest a program to "re-tree" New Orleans with the help of SEEDS students as coordinators. No source of funds to execute this project were then available. Since then Ambrose Anouro of Delaware State University has proposed a cooperative effort between JCSU, DSU, and Dillard University in New Orleans to do this project and monitor its progress over five years. Dr. Fail has completed a proposal concerning this effort.
• SEEDS student Jallah Rouse, who won a UNCF-Mellon Grant to conduct a study of heavy metal concentrations in drinking water in local minority homes near the school, has still not yet begun serious work on that project.
• Dr. Fail has written a proposal to look at the ecology of ten MegaCities that he forwarded to a person who produces films in New York City. No action has been taken on it.