Students will be able to apply knowledge of biology to one or more contemporary issue in society.

In biology, it is important to understand how the concepts that make up the discipline affect the rest of the world and society as a whole. I have been able to demonstrate this knowledge in many of my classes, such as ecosystems ecology and evolution.

In ecosystems ecology, we spent the semester learning about every part of the earth that we could fit into the semester. We learned about how the earth and other planets were formed, how life began on earth, how nutrients in the soil sustain life on earth, and how extra nutrients in the environment can be detrimental to certain ecosystems. Specifically, we learned about how the input of nutrients into the environment from agriculture and pollutants from the continuous burning of coal increase greenhouse gasses, affect net primary production, and increase the amount of eutrophication. At the end of the semester, we complied research on the net primary production of lentic and lotic systems that we had been doing in lab. We presented this research at the campus-wide research day to an audience of students and professors. This project allowed me to see the process of creating a presentation that is directed at a more mature, but varied (subject-wise) audience. After this presentation, I find myself being more adept at tailoring presentations to specific audiences. The link to this presentation is included below.

In evolution, we learned about how certain subgroups of society have a tendency to reject the theory of evolution. Some of them say that because it is just a theory, there is no real scientific evidence to prove such a theory. Most of these people who reject the theory of evolution do so because of their religious backgrounds. However, we learned that there was a larger, underlying issue to peoples’ lack of acceptance of evolution. People more likely to reject evolution of they are uneducated. This stems to a lack of education of these people. The uneducated are less likely to understand scientists and their technical jargon. Therefore, they do not trust scientists. This makes sense as to why they do not trust scientists on the theory of evolution. The same can be said for the issue of climate change. This is something that is crucial to understand in order to increase society’s acceptance of things that most scientists know as facts. We need to investigate this lack of trust and brainstorm solutions in order to keep the public more informed and accepting of scientific fact. When scientists can do this, modern issues such as climate change may have more support. In this class, we created posters portraying this understanding. My group contacted a number of zoos around the country and asked them questions about evolution – if they portray it in their zoos, the political demographic of their area, etc. We then analyzed whether the zoos were publicly or privately owned, and tied that into their responses. This poster allowed us to learn how to communicate potentially sensitive subject matter to the general public. This project allowed me to understand certain issues that occur with communication between the scientific and non-scientific community, and gave me ways that I can navigate these in the future. This poster is linked below.

Net Primary Production

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Xnp1c5o9DgCJ2O1GO4FJgBSd5BbkwwoDLkTq5Hg9Etg/edit?usp=sharing

Evolution Poster

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Md_hG7X3JGHfz3i22Ub4eQPeANZSstmo/view?usp=sharing