Marine Biology Field Trip

When the marine biology course is offered in the fall, the students in the course participate in a field trip to Wallop's Island Marine Science Consortium located on the Chesapeake Bay.  Students have the opportunity to visit a wide range of habitats including low and high energy beaches, mud flats, salt marshes, uninhabited dunes, maritime forests and inter tidal waters.  We also spend time out on the water trawling for organisms that are found in the coastal waters that line the bay.  An evening trip to catch bioluminescent ctenophores is always a highlight.

Invasive Species Removal on the Interpretive Trail

Wilson College is fortunate to have an interpretive trail on campus that includes a natural wetland, grassland area and forest.  However, like most natural areas today, the trail is plagued with invasive plant species.  During the fall of 2005, the Conservation Biology course decided to tackle the issue of invasive species and decide how best to return the trail to its natural state.  The students chose three plots where invasives would be removed as well as two control plots.  One control plot was relatively free of invasives and one plot had a very large percentage of invasives.  During the course of the semester, the students identified all the plants in the plot and physically removed all invasive species.  The goal is to have students from other classes continue the project and determine if the invasive removal was successful.

General Biology Course at Caledonia

Each spring, the students enrolled in the General Biology course take a trip to Caledonia State Park to conduct some field research.  They collect samples from the stream, identify plant life along the trails and attempt to find some interesting fungi.

Physical and Life Sciences Symposium

At the end of the fall semester each year, the senior biology and chemistry majors present their research projects at the Physical and Life Sciences Symposium.  This research was proposed by the student in the spring of their junior year and the research was conducted during the summer and fall.  Each student chooses their own topic and conducts the research independently under the nominal guidance of a faculty member.  Some of the abstracts from recent projects can be found on the student research page.

Pennsylvania Academy of Sciences

The Pennsylvania Academy of Sciences holds their annual meeting each spring and many of the Wilson seniors present their research at this scientific meeting.  This meeting is attended by faculty and students from across the state and provides an opportunity to share current data and research ideas.  Some of the presentations from recent years are listed below.