FOR 332—Forest Ecology

Course Syllabus

Fall 2005

INSTRUCTORS

Ruth Yanai, Associate Professor, 210 Marshall Hall,

office hours: Friday 10:00 a.m. – 11:00, or by appointment.

tel: 470-6955, e-mail: rdyanai@mailbox.syr.edu

Kimberly Bohn, Visiting Instructor, 218 Marshall Hall,

office hours: Monday 2:00 p.m. -3:00 p.m., Thursday 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., or by appointment.

tel: 470-4877, e-mail: kkbohn@syr.edu

FORMAT

This is a 3-credit course, with 2 hours of classroom instruction and 1 lab per week.  We will meet in the  classroom on Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:30 – 10:50  a.m. in 319 Marshall Hall. We will use the first part of each class meeting time for formal instruction including lectures, discussion and class activities. You can use the remaining time to work on class assignments in your groups or interact with the instructors.  A brief quiz on the assigned reading will be given and discussed at the start of each class. 

Labs are scheduled for Friday afternoon from 2 – 5 p.m. (meet at Stadium Place for field labs).  Labs will alternate between ‘observation’ days when the professor and students discuss the landscape in context to the reading material for the week and ‘field measurements’ days when experiments are performed. You will work in small groups for the laboratory portion of the course.  On the Tuesday that precedes each lab measurement period, you will pose hypotheses and select methods for testing them.  On the Tuesday following, you will present your results, and we will collectively interpret and critically analyze them.

Two instructors share responsibility for this course.  Kimberly Bohn will lead the formal instruction in the classroom and the field instruction on  ‘observation’ days.  Ruth Yanai will facilitate your development of field investigations and your lab reports.

REQUIRED TEXTS

FOR 332 Forest Ecology Reader  (available in the Rotunda in the basement of Bray Hall)

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

We use e-mail to communicate about assignments and we will have a webpage for this course at www.esf.edu/for/yanai/for332/default.html. You are expected to check your e-mail every day and to check in on the web 2-3 times a week. If you do not use your syr.edu account, have your e-mail forwarded to your active account. Go to http://cms.syr.edu/email/aliasing and fill out the “Change your account form.”  You will need your username and password.  If you do not know your username contact the Computing and Media Services Information Center at 116 Hinds Hall (phone: 443-2677, email: consult@syr.edu).  If you know your username, but forgot your password, you can reset it at https://selfserv.syr.edu/accounts/pwdForgot.asp or at 116 Hinds Hall.

Objectives and Goals

Students who successfully complete this course will have a command of the following key ecological concepts and proficiency in the following skills:

These concepts and processes can be explored in a variety of contexts. Examples include forests native to our region, plantations and urban forests in our region, and forests in other biomes such as the tropical and boreal forests.

Evaluation and Performance Requirements

Late assignments will lose value at the rate of 10% per day (weekend days count too!).

Excuses for late work and absences—excuses related to illness or family problems must go through Mr. Slocum in ESF student services. The instructors must approve planned absences for field labs (which are difficult to make up) or other assignments.

Kimberly in Red

Ruth in Green

SCHEDULE

FINAL EXAM: Be prepared to critque a journal article

Learning Teams

You will be assigned to a team in which you will plan, implement, analyze and report your field measurements.  We will compose teams of members with a variety of skills.  You might want to rotate roles within your teams, such as leadership, data manipulation, interpretation, and writing.  Each report will be evaluated and a single grade will be assigned to the team.

Field trips

We will be taking field trips for a number of the labs.  Dress appropriately.  Long pants, boots, and a hard hat must be worn at all field labs.  Be prepared for inclement weather, bee stings (if you are allergic), etc.  Bring any materials that you own that will help your group test your hypothesis (compass, diameter tape, etc.).

Group Lab Reports

The purpose of the lab exercises is to gain experience with the concepts and processes important to this course.  The lab report should document your progress in mastering them. The lab reports will be evaluated (graded) but we will also give you feedback for improvement that you can use to improve your next performance.

Write your report for an audience of strangers, although your classmates will be the primary beneficiaries.  Your report must be neat and professional (12 point font, 1-inch margins, and double-spaced) and submitted electronically, so that it can be distributed over the internet. Communicating is one of the processes to be mastered in this course, and effective written communication depends on spelling, grammar, clarity, and professional presentation, as well as content. Use Elements of Style or the University of Chicago Style Manual.  Look at a forest ecology journal for format of citations.

A grading rubric detailing the requirements of the above sections is available on the class website. The early sections of the report (introduction, objectives, and methods) should be prepared in advance of the lab session.  They will be assessed on Thursday or Friday (prior to the lab), so that you will have an opportunity to revise them based on the feedback you receive. Lab results are due by 8:00  am Tuesday so that they can be posted on the web in advance of our class meeting.  Students should also bring an alternate means of displaying results to class (on paper or disk) as a back-up.  Results (either a table or figures) should be pasted into a Word Document, along with a brief description of your experiment and hypothesis above the results.  Full lab reports are due electronically on Thursday morning.  It is critical that all lab groups submit an electronic report since the entire class will use each of the group reports in synthesizing an individual response to the group reports. 

Send your results and reports to Carolyn Griffin at forestecology@esf.edu and cc’ed to Ruth Yanai at rdyanai@mailbox.syr.edu.  .   Paper copies of the full report are due the same day in class.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSE TO GROUP REPORTS

The purpose of this assignment is to integrate the group reports that are presented on Tuesday, which will cover a range of subjects.  The individual response allows you to use information generated by other groups in order to address the ecological concept under investigation.  It also will help you to practice defining concepts and applying them. 

Critique of Journal Article

The purpose of critiquing a journal article is to learn about a topic in forest ecology, to study the scientific process in the reported study, and to practice the processes of critical analysis and communicating to your peers.  Periodic review of journal articles during the semester will provide guidance in identifying key components of journal articles, as well as identifying strengths and weaknesses of a report.  These skills will be demonstrated in individual student presentations (oral and written) of a selected journal article.

Code of conduct

All students are expected to abide by the Student Code of Conduct which is described in the Student Handbook (http://www.esf.edu/students/handbook/).  In addition, plagiarism is taken very seriously at this institution, and can result in failure of this course and possibly dismissal from the college.  If you are unclear about what constitutes an act of plagiarism, please refer to the student handbook or contact one of your instructors.

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