>Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 08:16:55 -0700
>From: Rick Reis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: TP Msg. #713 A GRADUATE EDUCATION FRAMEWORK FOR TROPICAL
>CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>List-Subscribe:
> <https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor>,
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"When asked whether an independent India would follow the British pattern of
development, Mahatma Ghandi replied, "It took Britain half the resources of the
planet to achieve this prosperity. How many planets would a country like India
require?" The challenge of addressing the seemingly contradictory objectives of
environmental conservation and economic development is particularly urgent in
tropical countries, which often have both high biodiversity and some of the
world's lowest standards of living."
CHECK OUT THE NEW MIT SPONSORED
"The Tomorrow's Professor Blog"
A place for discussion about teaching and learning at:
http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog/
* * * * *
TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(SM) MAILING LIST
desk-top faculty development one hundred times a year
Over 26,250 subscribers
Over 650 postings
Over 650 academic institutions
Over 100 countries
Sponsored by
THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
http://ctl.stanford.edu
An archive of all past postings (with a two week delay) can be found at:
http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/index.shtml
* * * * *
Folks:
The posting below, while using a particular set of subjects - tropical
conservation and development - provides a model for interdisciplinary education
that should appeal to many other departments and universities. The posting is
an from the paper "A graduate education framework for tropical conservation and
development". and is provided by Professor Karen Kainer [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] of
the School of Forest Resource & Conservation/ Tropical Conservation &
Development Program at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. Reprinted
with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
UP NEXT: Department Meetings
Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning
----------------------------------------- 1,981 words
------------------------------------
A GRADUATE EDUCATION FRAMEWORK FOR TROPICAL CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Kainer, K.A., M. Schmink, J.R. Stepp, H. Covert, E.M. Bruna, J.L. Dain, S.
Espinosa and S. Humphries. 2006. A graduate education framework for tropical
conservation and development. Conservation Biology 20(1):3-13.
Reshaping graduate education
This complex, interrelated, and rapidly changing world has motivated
universities to rethink the educational experience of society's future leaders.
In the United States, and perhaps more so in developing countries, public
investment in higher education is predicated upon a return of knowledge and
technology for the benefit of society. Some call for changes not to just "tweak
graduate education around the edges", but to reshape it completely.
Conventional graduate training related to tropical conservation and development
has typically separated the two fields, with students focusing on either
conservation from the perspective of the biophysical sciences or development as
an extension of the social sciences. Employers, however, indicate that they
need team members with cross-disciplinary and disciplinary depth, skills in
languages, negotiation, and policy analysis. The ability to effectively elicit
and present ideas and negotiate varying interests can make or break a
conservation program, regardless of technical merit. Although the traditional
currency of peer-reviewed publications still holds the greatest weight within
the scientific community, communicating effectively with a remarkably diverse
group of stakeholders, ranging from indigenous groups to corporate CEOs, is now
considered a highly desirable conservation skill.
How might graduate programs better prepare students to become this type of
skilled, forward-thinking leader prepared to improve human well-being while
conserving the diversity of biological wealth in the tropics? The University of
Florida's Tropical Conservation and Development Program (TCD) has been
wrestling with these issues for over 15 years, and the program's framework for
managing and adapting a graduate program is a product of these years of
experience.
Framework for tropical conservation and development learning and action
The TCD program, housed in the University of Florida's Center for Latin
American Studies, was established in the 1980s. The program does not grant
degrees; rather, it offers an interdisciplinary certificate that functions much
like a minor. It also provides a supportive learning environment, and
fellowships and research grants for M.S. and Ph.D. students who are pursuing
careers in tropical conservation and development
(http://www.latam.ufl.edu/tcd). Because TCD is housed in the Center for Latin
American Studies, without allegiance to any particular college, it enjoys a
level of autonomy and neutrality that has fostered experimentation and
development of unique mechanisms that support learning and action.
Approximately one-half of all participating students are from Latin America and
other tropical countries. Between 1988 and 2005, the TCD fellowship competition
has awarded 248 academic-year fellowships to 145 entering and continuing
students from 27 countries. The graduate education framework that has emerged
from the TCD program builds on traditional disciplinary foundations, integrates
past and present student experiences, and embraces collaborative learning and
action. At the heart of this framework is a learning and action platform - an
intellectual, social, and professionally-safe space for participants to
interact and innovate. Feeding into this platform is a triad of theory, skills,
and praxis with respective foci on problem-solving, personal-leadership and
field application.
Problem-centered focus
The theoretical leg of the platform draws on the disciplinary depth of diverse
students and faculty, encouraging transdisciplinary exploration within a
problem-oriented approach. The current cohort of 88 TCD students is
matriculated in over a dozen social and biophysical science units across
campus. The overarching goal is for students to achieve fluency in their home
discipline and competency in others. Students are encouraged to let the problem
at hand guide the choice of applicable discipline(s), rather than let the
discipline determine the limits of the problem itself. Intellectual heterodoxy
and innovation emerge from cross-disciplinary dialogue regarding key concepts
or problems.
Personal-leadership focus
A second dimension of the TCD learning and action platform is development of
skilled and creative leaders. Graduate students in the program typically bring
an impressive amount of experience, perhaps through a research project or work
with rural communities through programs such as Peace Corps. Respondents of a
2004-2005 TCD student survey had a mean age of 32 years, and over 63% had
between 1 and 6 years of work experience. Another 30% had more than 7 years of
experience (n = 44). The TCD program consciously creates a space where students
can reflect on and contextualize their experiences, skills, and knowledge,
solidifying their learning and strengthening leadership abilities.
Traditionally graduate students are trained to develop and sharpen technical
skills essential for becoming a rigorous researcher. Within the TCD program,
the emphasis is on developing other complementary skills: learn outside their
immediate disciplines, think in terms of linked socioecological systems, work
in teams, negotiate among competing interests, and communicate in nonacademic
formats. In this model, faculty act not only as experts, but also assume the
role of facilitating learning, rather than controlling it. Students take
greater responsibility for their own learning, build upon what they already
know, and discover and define what they need to know.
Field-application focus
The third leg of the TCD platform focuses on field application of the
accumulated skills and knowledge. This can also be called praxis, or "practice
with reflection". Student interact with TCD's myriad institutional partners (of
which TCD alumni are key), promoting collaborative learning and practice and
building an international and transgenerational commitment to tropical
conservation and development. Students learn to juggle different expectations
and often competing roles as they negotiate the focus and approach of their
research with academic committee members, host-country partners, and local
communities.
Putting TCD into Practice
What are some of the practical ways in which the TCD Program puts this approach
into practice? Rather than creating a formal degree program, TCD concentrates
on developing a complementary set of activities (courses, workshops, and
conferences, fellowships, research grants, and visitors). The three central
goals of the program (training, research, and promotion of a learning and
action network) are blended together in practice such that most programmatic
decisions are based on how a particular decision might maximize gain in each of
these three areas. Development of the program's three core courses is a good
example of this approach.
Coursework
Community Forest Management and TCD Research Methods are examples of a core TCD
conceptual and methods courses. They are team taught by social and biological
scientists, discuss key concepts and theories to address central issues from a
comparative perspective across multiple scales in time and space, and draw
extensively on student experience and expertise. As with other core courses,
student feedback is solicited formally through written and oral evaluations.
These evaluations exemplify TCD's emphasis on continuous critical learning,
improve the course, serve to keep teaching fresh and enthusiastic, and offer
students a stake in the course and larger program.
Other TCD core courses provide explicit training in practical skills
development. Current course options include Facilitation Skills for Adaptive
Management, Conservation Entrepreneurship, and Collaboration and Conflict
Management. In these course the focus is on learning and practicing the
communication, facilitation, negotiation, mediation, and management skills
needed by professionals in the real world. Subsequently, students who take
these courses are often tapped to organize on-campus training sessions and
workshops. They may also develop off-campus activities with partner
institutions through the practitioner experience described below or through a
paid consultancy. With faculty backstopping, these opportunities incrementally
build and refine students' skills and simultaneously develop new and strengthen
existing linkages with field partners.
Alternative learning and action spaces
Although the core courses are central to the curriculum, the hallmark of the
TCD graduate education program is the multiple learning opportunities outside
the classroom, what we call alternative learning and action spaces. The
program's field-research grants competition is a good example of this type of
space. Between 1988 and 2005, 227 grants were awarded for students to work in
33 foreign countries on projects ranging from the evaluation of collaborative
management projects in Uganda to the evolutionary ecology and conservation of
Neotropical birds. Graduate students compete for these annual awards based on
sound scientific proposals judged by an interdisciplinary faculty panel. Each
recipient is affiliated with a local organization and develops written
protocols for collaboration when possible. All are required to return their
research results to partner groups through locally appropriate formats.
Similarly, they share their experiences and findings with others at the Uni!
versity of Florida through an annual TCD field research clinic.
The TCD program also offers funds for visiting professionals and "practitioner
experiences," a form of internship in which students work with a host
organization, learning from them and contributing to the organization's
efforts. Recent practitioner experiences include full participation on a World
Wildlife Fund evaluation team in Suriname and Guyana, and facilitation of a
partner-driven workshop in Mexico on recent developments in mahogany research.
In contrast, visiting professionals come to campus, and usually conduct a
workshop or deliver a course session on a particular skill or approach of
interest to students. While advancing their own professional goals, these
visitors keep the TCD program current and create a space where students can
learn from field personnel entrenched in day-to-day conservation and
development realities.
Other examples of alternative learning spaces include orientations and
retreats, a weekly student-led seminar series, and predeparture (field
research) and proposal-writing workshops. Student teams have also organized and
led multiple one-half-day or one-day workshops to share their disciplinary
expertise in such diverse topics as ecological concepts for social scientists,
gender analysis targeting natural scientists, and basic geographic information
system skills for the nonexpert. Student-led workshops provide another forum
for students to practice and fine-tune their skills. Backstopping by TCD
faculty is key to the success of these workshops, ensuring that students on the
delivery end have sufficient support, and those on the receiving end get a good
product.
These alternative spaces do not add unnecessary course requirements to an
already-packed graduate curriculum, and students indicate that they are
extremely helpful in supporting immediate graduate-study needs and providing a
broader perspective on professional roles. Learning and action spaces are not
only for students, however, as the program places a high value on
systematically and thoroughly reflecting on its activities. This type of
learning is sometimes termed transformative learning because by incorporating
periodic and systematic evaluation of the learning process, one is forced to
critique fundamental principles and habits of doing work, often transforming or
changing one's knowledge base, skills, and attitudes. An example of this
learning within TCD is the end-of-semester faculty retreats organized to
discuss teaching and other program activities. Similarly, student input on
program activities and strategies is solicited on a regular basis to delineate
new ideas an!
d outline corrective action. These critical moments of reciprocal learning
continue to change and improve the way TCD carries out its graduate training.
They also demonstrate the value of student input and collaboration, fostering
trust within the program and mutual respect between students and faculty.
Program challenges
This "learning and action" approach to tropical conservation and development
training begets new challenges for graduate education. The praxis elements of
the program with explicit requirements to collaborate with home-country
partners and return research results to local audiences, create an additional
set of demands on graduate students, by redefining good research. We currently
have no evidence that TCD students take longer to complete their degrees, but
the academic certificate program is newly implemented, and we are monitoring
this important aspect. Service demands on TCD faculty are also elevated as they
seek funds for and administer new programs to support collaborative field
efforts and alternative educational opportunities. In addition, faculty time
and energy needed to build and maintain the necessary long-term, long-distance
relationships with partners are significant and typically not rewarded within
academia. Although many disciplinary advisors welcome the comp!
lementary support TCD provides their students, the program can be viewed as a
hindrance to graduate studies given course requirements, muddying of
disciplinary waters, and general uncertainties and tradeoffs that accompany
working closely with host-country partners. Despite these challenges,
adaptively-managed educational programs that emphasize a broader learning and
action network of students, faculty and field partners provide the best hope
for responding to the emerging challenges of tropical conservation and
development.
--
>* * * * * * * *
>NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:
>https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
>--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==
>tomorrows-professor mailing list
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
