Chapter Directory > University of Puerto Rico at Humacao
"Eos" » Humacao, Puerto Rico
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The Chapter's primary goal is to increase the opportunities of its members to achieve a higher academic (graduate school) level in ecology. We will work to serve as a first step in the ladder of opportunities that the students may be exposed to during their academic years at UPR-Humacao. |
Plans for 2007-2008
- We have three major objectives this year. The first one is to register the highest number of members to make the chapter grow and create a database (network) of ecologically-oriented students. To help do that we received a Maintenance Grant that will be used to buy promotional materials that we will distribute to the students at different recruitment activities. Our activities will be coordinated with the student associations to avoid duplication of efforts and to share resources.
- We will develop a website to keep our members informed about opportunities in ecology and related fields, and to share contributions about local ecological news and links to webpages relevant to our activities. Our aim is to help the students find opportunities in an ecology related career. The webpage will serve not only the objective of being a common information center, but to promote student participation, by sharing their comments and other contributions.
- We also plan to establish a long term monitoring program in Bahía de Jobos that will focus on ecological aspects of the mangrove forest to see if they can be used as natural indicators of global changes. The academic purpose of this project is to establish a research site for students of our campus, where they can participate as collaborators in a long term ecological research. For this project we are preparing a proposal for the Special Project Grant.
2006-2007 Activities
- We had our first meeting as a chapter on March 8, 2007. We invited all the students interested in ecology to an overview talk about the ESA and the SEEDS program. Our faculty advisor discussed the importance of networking in science and the success of the ESA at this task. He also explored the fact that ecology is a very diverse field, and that ecologists do a lot of things, from traditional ecological research to policy and outreach. We proceeded to talk about the SEEDS program, the benefits it offers for its members and its new presence in our campus. The activity concluded with a slide show of UPR- Humacao students participating in SEEDS activities like field trips and ESA Meetings. After the slide show a "sign up" form was distributed for the new members. A total of 14 signed up that day.
- Later that month our chapter received a visit from Katherine Hoffman and Jorge Ramos, who met the faculty and some of our members, gave a talk about careers in ecology and visited the Bahía de Jobos National Estuarine Research Reserve. This visit came at a perfect time to boost up the dissemination of information about our chapter and the SEEDS program.
Faculty Advisor
Denny Fernández Del Viso-Gámez, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Biology
University of Puerto Rico at Humacao
100 Carr. 908 - CUH Station
Humacao, PR 00791-4300
