Frontiers summer 1999
From
the dean
This year, the University celebrates
the 90th anniversary of its Lake Itasca Forestry and
Biological Station. Founded in 1909 as a forestry station,
Itasca is now managed by the College of Biological Sciences
(CBS) and has become the University's premier outdoor
biology lab and class-room. Thousands of students who
otherwise spent their college careers in the urban setting
of the Twin Cities campus have enjoyed a rich outdoor
experience on the shores of Lake Itasca. For many, the
experience of working at the station is remembered as
the best University experience of all.
The Itasca station sits at the headwaters
of the Mississippi, creating an interesting connection:
CBS students and faculty studying living things in their
natural habitats at Itasca are wading in the same river
that, more than 200 miles to the south, flows past many
of the labs where CBS researchers are looking at life
under the microscope.
The station's location is serendipitous
for other reasons, as well. It is surrounded by the
50 square miles of Itasca State Park, which offers a
variety of unpolluted and undisturbed habitats--not
to mention beautiful scenery. And it sits at the confluence
of three great plant biomes--the coniferous forest,
the eastern deciduous forest, and the western prairie--making
it the perfect location for studying different ecosystems.
Yet it is not just Itasca's usefulness
as an outdoor classroom that makes it special. Itasca
is also a remote, peaceful setting (equipped with modern
labs) that lets graduate students become deeply involved
in their studies during intensive, six-week, dawn-to-dusk
courses in neuroscience and molecular biology.
What is most special about Itasca, though,
is the camaraderie that develops there. Students and
faculty get to know each other in small-group settings
like the neuroscience ³boot camp,² the high school field
biology session, and the summer field biology courses
discussed in this issue. We intend to eventually extend
this kind of small-group experience to every CBS freshman
by bringing them all to Itasca; we will start with an
intensive, end-of-spring-semester course in 2000 for
60 to 100 freshmen.
To comfortably and safely accommodate
the approximately 1,500 people who stay at the station
each year for days, weeks, or even months, we need to
replace some ailing buildings. Funding for this project
is likely to be part of the University's 2000 capital
request to the state legislature. The largest part of
this project is a new student center that will include
an auditorium, a library with Internet access, and a
computer room. (Though Itasca is a remote and rustic
setting, students, researchers, and faculty need to
stay connected to the outside world!)
With design of the student center underway,
with new Itasca course offerings expanding beyond CBS,
and with our plans to offer an Itasca experience for
all CBS freshmen, the station is entering its tenth
decade with new promise. And, with undisturbed wild
places and natural habitats shrinking and disappearing
worldwide, the station is becoming ever more valuable
to us as both an outdoor laboratory and a retreat.
I invite you to read this issue to find
out more about the kinds of learning, research, outreach,
and fun that go on at Itasca; the station's history
and future; and the fond memories of those who spent
time there. I believe you will agree that the station
is a unique gem--one that we can be proud of; one that
we must preserve.
Robert Elde Dean, College of Biological
Sciences
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Frontiers Summer 1999
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