21st Century Fish and Wildlife Curricula
Location
Peavy/Richardson Halls
Event Website
http://uenr.forestry.oregonstate.edu/
Start Date
3-15-2008 3:30 PM
End Date
3-15-2008 4:00 PM
Description
Potential employers of fish and wildlife graduates are increasingly looking for well-rounded employees that can communicate effectively, work autonomously, and solve problems. A paradigm shift in curriculum development has been driven by these requirements and intensified by an entirely new type of student. Historically, students in the natural resources have been characterized as introverts; however, the new generation of students, termed “Millenials”, present a challenge to natural resource departments due to differences in sociability (McGlynn 2005), diversity (Broido 2004), and ethics (DeBard 2004). Academic changes are also impacting the ways in which students are taught (Aikenhead 2006), with an increasingly specialized professoriat and decreasing numbers of instructors who can teach a broad range of topics to undergraduates. The question then becomes: how can programs accommodate the demands of majors and graduate schools for specialization while providing well-rounded graduates sought by agencies and maintaining quality instructor for non-majors? We suggest updated fish and wildlife curricula that reflect these myriad demands, including quantitative competency, communications skills, problem-solving, organizational management, ethics and philosophy, human elements, fundamental science studies, the language of science, and experiential learning.
21st Century Fish and Wildlife Curricula
Peavy/Richardson Halls
Potential employers of fish and wildlife graduates are increasingly looking for well-rounded employees that can communicate effectively, work autonomously, and solve problems. A paradigm shift in curriculum development has been driven by these requirements and intensified by an entirely new type of student. Historically, students in the natural resources have been characterized as introverts; however, the new generation of students, termed “Millenials”, present a challenge to natural resource departments due to differences in sociability (McGlynn 2005), diversity (Broido 2004), and ethics (DeBard 2004). Academic changes are also impacting the ways in which students are taught (Aikenhead 2006), with an increasingly specialized professoriat and decreasing numbers of instructors who can teach a broad range of topics to undergraduates. The question then becomes: how can programs accommodate the demands of majors and graduate schools for specialization while providing well-rounded graduates sought by agencies and maintaining quality instructor for non-majors? We suggest updated fish and wildlife curricula that reflect these myriad demands, including quantitative competency, communications skills, problem-solving, organizational management, ethics and philosophy, human elements, fundamental science studies, the language of science, and experiential learning.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cuenr/7thBiennial/Sessions/48
Comments
Session #10: Collaboration and Experiential Learning. Presentation for 7th Biennial Conference on University Education in Natural Resources, March 13-15, 2008, Corvallis, Oregon. Featured in the ScholarsArchive@OSU in Oregon State University. Suggested Citation: Wolter, Bjorn, Millenbah, Kelly. 2008. 21st Century Fish and Wildlife Curricula. UENR 7th Biennial Conference, ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University. http://hdl.handle.net/1957/8113