Students get their feet wet as biodiversity conservationists

This is part of our biodiversity conservation course, which is our capstone course for our fairly new minor in biodiversity conservation. We're in the town of Christiansburg today. This is called the Diamond Hills wetland. So we have a group that's surveying plant life. We have a group that's looking at amphibians and a group that's looking at birds. And they are broken up into their respective groups. And just as the course and the activity implies, they are measuring the biodiversity at this site. And at the end of this, they ended the project. They'll summarize their data. They'll compile a report and make a presentation that will give to the town of Christiansburg. Obviously doing case studies and doing projects in lecture in a classroom is very valuable. But then we can take that information and apply it in the field and see that things often go wrong, and things are gonna go wrong tonight. So it's real-world in the since that when they are hired in these positions they're going to have to deal with these exact same issues. So we want to make sure they're prepared. The fun thing, as you talk and meet some of our incredible students that are in this minor is we've got students from across campus. My major here is multimedia journalism, but I have a minor in biodiversity conservation. I'm a nature person. I call myself an environmentalist. This minor kinda puts my passions together in a way that I can go out in the field and do stuff like this. It's much cooler than seeing a picture of it on the slideshow. "Here's a little blue head chub." "Aw, look at him." With it being a capstone course and students getting ready to finish their minor. We were looking for a real-world application. We wanted our students to be able to tackle real-world questions, solve real-world problems. And at the same time live by Ut Prosim and give back to the town of Christiansburg. These are our highlights. This is what, not only the students look forward to, but the faculty, we look forward to these events as well.