Buena Vista Global Fellows 2016 selected and will participate in UNT's Tracing Darwin's Path study abroad course to Chile

Buena Vista University (BVU) of Storm Lake, Iowa has selected the next Global Fellows 2016 who will participate in the University of North Texas (UNT) study abroad course to Puerto Williams, Chile. Dr. Melinda Coogan continues to lead the student group from Iowa to Chile for the fifth year. Dr. Matthew Packer joins Dr. Coogan this year to assist in leading their 6 students during the course.

Front row from left: Rosalind Russell, Kyle Wiebers, Emma Konkler. Back row from left: Dr. Matthew Packer, Tanner Cook, Jacob Braddock, Dong Wang, Dr. Melinda Coogan.

The study abroad field course "Tracing Darwin's Path" has been co-taught by UNT and the University of Magallanes (UMAG) for the last decade. Students enrolled in the course receive exposure to interdisciplinary research, conservation and education at one of the most pristine wilderness areas remaining in the world. The course explores ways of defining, studying, communicating, and conserving biocultural diversity. This is achieved by exposing students to a first-hand experience in the Omora Ethnobotanical Park (OEP), a long-term ecological study site that serves to link society and development with biodiversity, history and ecosystems in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve with an active hands-on biocultural conservation approach. Students are encouraged to share their perspectives on environmental ethics as it relates to their countries and the world.

The field course is held roughly ninety percent outdoors with activities of mountain hiking and a three day overnight camping trip. They will see glaciers and a penguin colony as well as participate in bird banding and mist netting, and also experience the life cycles of major aquatic invertebrates in the Robalo Watershed on Navarino Island. Students will get first-hand encounters with the diversity of people inhabiting the sub-Antarctic Magellanic ecoregion that includes handcrafters from the indigenous Yahgan community, teachers from local schools as well as the Latin American and Chilean students.

For more information, contact the Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program Office at 940-369-8211 or email chile@unt.edu