We are excited to announce the hire of Dr. Barbara Dugelby as the Director of Wild Basin Creative Research Center.  Dr. Dugelby is an ecologist and educator with over 15 years of U.S. and international experience working with large, multi-stakeholder conservation and science programs, educational program development, and teaching.  She has a strong background in collaborative science-based conservation planning, climate adaptation, restoration ecology, and community-based conservation.  Dr. Dugelby has held previous positions with The Nature Conservancy, Round River Conservation Studies, and Organization for Tropical Studies.  She has deep roots in Central Texas and attended the University of Texas as an undergraduate; she was selected by Austin’s mayor and city council to serve on the first City Endangered Species Task Force in the 1980s.  She received her master’s degree and Ph.D. from Duke University.  Please welcome Barbara to St. Edward’s University and Wild Basin!

Thanks to a generous grant from 3M, 20 Austin area teachers will have the chance to attend a 3-day workshop at St. Edward’s, to be held 3 – 5 August on campus.  During the workshop, which will be held in conjunction with the Austin Area STEM Conference, teachers will learn to use data from our new air quality and meteorological instruments, to explore the impact of ozone on plant health using our ozone garden, and to watch the dynamic nature of weather over Austin using our sky cameras.

In particular, the workshop has the following objectives:

• Increase knowledge about and confidence in teaching about air quality issues among Austin-area STEM middle and high school teachers.
• Create 20 units of lesson plans (3 lesson plans each) for Austin-area high school teachers.
• Teachers will learn how to access and download real environmental data from Austin and how to incorporate that data into lesson plans in a variety of subjects.

Each attending teacher will be provided with supplies and a $225 stipend for attending all three days and completing the workshop.  Registration is limited to 20 teachers.

The workshop will meet on the afternoons of August 3 and 4, then all day on August 5.

For more information on the workshop, contact Gary Morris.

To register, visit the AISD STEM Conference website.

Here’s more information on the three organizers:

Dr. Morris joined St. Edward’s in July 2014; he currently serves as Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Professor of Physics. He began his research program on urban air quality in Houston while teaching at Rice University (2000 – 2004). There, he established an ozone measurement program using weather balloons that resulted in more than 500 flights of data since 2004 (the largest such data set within a megacity in the world). In his career, he has worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as a National Research Council post-doctoral fellow, and at Hokkaido University and at the Frontier Research Center for Global Change in Japan as a Fulbright Scholar.

Dr. Bill Quinn has served on the faculty at St. Edward’s since 1983. He has engaged in a wide variety of teaching and research activities during that period, but his primary interests remain in the area of terrestrial ecology and plant photosynthetic pathways. He has worked with students on the main St. Edward’s campus in Austin, at the Wild Basin Creative Research Center, elsewhere in Texas and other states, and overseas. He has served as the President of the Texas Academy of Science and on numerous other boards and committees at St. Edward’s and in Austin.

Dr. Steven Fletcher has served on the faculty at St. Edward’s since 2006 and graduated from the University of Texas with a PhD in Science Education after teaching middle and high school science for 6 years. He has engaged in a wide range of activities to support the teaching of math and science at middle and secondary schools, directing the Texas STEM Teaching Circle of area teachers (which meets monthly during the academic year). He has also been the Principal Investigator on two National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship grants to develop the next generation of math and science teachers. He previously directed the 3M-funded Project Sustain.

Angie Lux ’12, a former biology student and Noyce Scholar at St. Edward’s, was recently featured in an article on the SEU webpage.  In the article, see discusses how she developed a love for science and the impact that the Robert Noyce Scholarship Program directed by Prof. Steven Fletcher has had on her career as a teacher in secondary education.

Link:  https://www.stedwards.edu/articles/featured-stories/2016/04/save-teachers

• Wild Basin is hosting an Earth Day scavenger hunt on April 22, followed by a full moon yoga class on the porch of the visitors center from 7-8pm.  For more info, click here.  RSVP for the yoga event here.

• The golden-cheeked warblers have arrived in Central Texas after spending the winter in the tropics.  Four males have established territories at Wild Basin, so now is a great time to hike on the trails and listen/look for these endangered songbirds.

• We submitted grant proposals for continuous water quality monitoring equipment in Bee Creek as well as new signage along the trails to support delivery of dynamic, smartphone-based interpretive content to students and visitors. SEU students in several courses, including Dr. Goering’s Writing About Science, Dr. Bilinski’s Ecology lab, and Dr. Beck’s Intro to Sustainability, are working to create content that will be shared with Wild Basin visitors using the Google Field Trip app and QR codes.

• Two of the Spring 2016 Wild Basin interns were selected to participate in REUs this summer:  Stephanie Perez (Georgetown University – environmental science & policy in Washington, DC) and Amanda De La Rosa (University of Virginia – field-based ecological research at Blandy Farm).

• Dr. Amy Belaire was invited to be the keynote speaker at the British Ornithologists’ Union 2016 conference.  She presented a keynote address titled “The dynamics between people and birds in urban landscapes” at the conference on April 7 in Leicester, England.

• Several new exhibits have been installed in the Wild Basin visitors center recently, including a set of microscopes, “A Year in the Life of A Golden-cheeked Warbler” exhibit, and touchscreens to explore iNaturalist.  Come check them out when you get a chance!

• For any planned research activities at Wild Basin or other BCP tracts, remember to submit permit applications at least 30 days in advance of your planned field work.  Please find permit application info on our website here: http://think.stedwards.edu/wildbasin/resources

• Last but not least, the winners of the 2016 Hook Scholarships will be announced this week.

On April 11, Dr. Paul Walter gave a talk at St. Edward’s University related to the recent detection of gravitational waves.  The detection itself was a remarkable achievement and marks the beginning of a new era of astronomy.  If you were not able to attend, a link is available to view the talk:  http://tinyurl.com/SEU-GWs

NOTRE DAME OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY’S SCHOOL OF PHARMACY

TUESDAY, MARCH 8^TH

JBWS 384

5:15PM

Meet Larry Shattuck, Director of Admissions at Notre Dame of Maryland University. He will talk about opportunities specific to St. Edward’s students. RSVP at jasond@stedwards.edu

UNIVERSITY OF INCARNATE WORD, FEIK SCHOOL OF PHARMACY

FRIDAY, APRIL 1^ST

JBWS 384

2:15PM

Meet Amy Diepenbrock, Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at UIW’s Feik School of Pharmacy, and other representatives. Hear about the pharmacy school and opportunities for St. Ed’s students. RSVP at jasond@stedwards.edu

FRIDAY, APRIL 8^TH

UTSA

12:30 – 3:00PM

See the school, meet students, faculty, staff, and admissions representatives. Students interested MUST ARSVP for this event. A van will depart from SEU at 10:45am. Spaces in the van are limited but students interested are encouraged to drive or carpool. RSVP is required weather a student is driving, carpooling, or going in the van. RSVP at jasond@stedwards.edu

Over the next two days, we’ll have reviewers on campus to evaluate our academic programs in Biology and Chemistry.  If you see them around, please make them feel welcome.

Here’s the list of reviewers:

Biology:  Robert Swanson (Valparaiso University) and Paula Dehn (Kentucky Weslayan College)
Chemistry:  Sunghee Lee (Iona College) and Graham Peaslee (Hope College)

Open forums for all faculty and staff occur as follows:

Biology:  Monday, 7 March from 4:30 – 5:30 pm in JBWS 384
Chemistry:  Tuesday, 8 March from 9:00 – 10:00 am in JBWS 288

For more information, please contact the NSCI Dean’s Office.

From Jason DeLaRosa:

Join us at 5:15pm for a meet and greet with Larry Shattuck, Director of Admission. You will get to hear all about the School of Pharmacy and any opportunities specifically for St. Edward’s University students, directly from the Director of Admissions! This is a great opportunity for anyone that is still open to Pharmacy as a potential career path!

For more info, contact Jason DeLaRosa.

Fellowship guidelines and application form can be found on the Wild Basin homepage, www.wildbasin.org.  Contact Amy at jbelaire@stedwards.edu, 512-327-7622, with any questions.  Applications are due at 5pm on March 11.