Ashley Morris - US grants

(Biological Sciences 61)
Biologists at the University of South Alabama are integrating cutting-edge scientific research into two undergraduate courses with the intent to expand this approach into other courses. The specific objectives of this project are: to integrate modern molecular approaches into undergraduate laboratory courses by developing two upper-level project-based lab courses in molecular ecology and bacterial genomics each featuring genomics and bioinformatics; and to foster students' abilities to comprehend scientific writing and generate novel scientific hypotheses and inferences through inter-disciplinary peer-review exercises. For each course the first half of the semester focuses on techniques and basic theory, while the second half of the semester is dedicated to collaborative student research. Cross-course collaboration for student projects is encouraged for students co-enrolled in the two courses. Specifically designed blogging software provides students with a comfortable platform on which to discuss relevant literature as well as their own projects. All efforts are being evaluated to aid in adjustments to future course offerings.

Intellectual merit: The intellectual merit of this project lies in the opportunity students are receiving to engage in on-going research projects using techniques newly introduced into the science they are studying. It builds on the research expertise of the team of investigators at the University of Southern Alabama. In addition the novel web-based approaches being used help students develop their scientific reading and writing skills.

Broader impacts: These two courses serve as a model for other mid-sized or smaller institutions, particularly those with academically diverse faculty. The online materials being developed are being made available to others interested in this approach to undergraduate education in the sciences.

The southeastern USA is botanically rich, with areas of high global biodiversity in both the Appalachians and the coastal plain. Millions of plant specimens have been collected from this region over the past four centuries, and these specimens and the information they contain currently reside in museums, or herbaria, at universities across the area. Scientists study these specimens intently; however, it is difficult to retrieve information at broad geographic and taxonomic scales without pipelines to move the information electronically from the specimen to an accessible pool of data. SERNEC, or the SouthEast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections, is a large regional network of botanical experts and collections that has, through an NSF-sponsored research coordination network (RCN) project, developed critical skills in biodiversity informatics. The current project will allow the SERNEC group to make data available for over 3 million specimens using the latest photography and information capture tools and to engage citizen scientists and students to assist in transcribing and georeferencing this large dataset. The research generated through this project can help regional planners, land managers and communities to manage their natural resources in our ever-changing environment.

The interaction of scientists, citizen scientists, and students will provide a synergy to build a research tool of an unparalleled scale and scope. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop an imaged and databased set of over 3 million specimens from over 100 herbaria in one of the most floristically diverse regions in North America and a global hotspot of plant diversity. This will represent a valuable data source for research on the response of vegetation to climate change, human development, and rapid migrations of introduced species. This region has been a biodiversity hotspot for 100 million years and this project should encourage research on changes over time to develop better predictive models as areas of biodiversity change. By partnering with Symbiota, Notes from Nature, GEOLocate, Adler Planetarium, iPlant/TACC, and Specify, the project will develop ways to best integrate various efforts for data accessibility. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program, and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).