This class is about teaching students
basic biological concepts that are related to marine biology but we teach
them both the biology, and then we teach them sort of how to understand the
biology by using mathematical models. Biology and math are very closely
related and math is a very important powerful tool to try and understand
biological questions, but I think having undergraduates get that experience where
both math and biology are taught in a very integrated fashion is a very
different exp
erience than what a traditional undergraduate gets. You look at what
the biologists have to say, you turn it into an abstract model, you look at what
the model has to say and you go back to the biologist and maybe they perform
experiments or go out in the field and they learn, you know, something new to
look at and then that informs new models and so it kind of goes around and around.
This close collaboration of a biologist and a mathematician coming together to teach
a course, the fact that the
re's these sorts of opportunities and that
students then get to also travel as a part of this kind of course. I mean those
things, an interdisciplinary travel-learning course is a very special
opportunity. The biology is basically putting words to the math in the
application to actual real-life models helps a lot. Oftentimes the best way to
understand the biological system is to model it mathematically, because then you
can see what kind of changes you can make to the biological system without
a
ctually having to go in and change the system. For our trip, which is really the
the field experience for this course, we went to St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. It
was amazing. It was definitely extremely gorgeous in the Virgin Islands, the water
was crystal-clear blue. Being able to collect data and have it relate to class
was completely phenomenal. We snorkeled all day, every day. It was
amazing. I saw incredible things: sea turtles,
stingrays, I saw a shark at one point, there was an octopus.
Having come with all
the knowledge they spent the first half of the semester learning about
all these things and then, "Oh, we studied that fish!" and "Oh, that's that coral species
we learn to identify," and having seen those moments where they get to see what
they saw in a book or a preserved specimen in the lab and they see it out
in the field moving around and doing its thing is really fun to watch.
Comments