Frontiers Summer 1999 ~ College of Biological Sciences

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Ripe for change

When they talk about their vision for the Lake Itasca Forestry and Biological Station, director Dave Biesboer and associate director Jon Ross start inching forward on their chairs. Their delivery quickens and they start finishing each other's sentences.

The most important thing about the station, they both agree, is that it's showing its age. The buildings need repairs and updating. The station is connected to the outside world by only two phone lines (and cell phones don't work there). Enrollment needs to increase, and some of the senior faculty members who have been mainstays at the station, teaching and conducting a wide array of research, are starting to retire.

But Biesboer, a plant biology professor in the College of Biological Sciences (CBS), doesn't see the station as an aging, stagnant facility. He sees it as ripe for change--change that will allow the station to reclaim its place as one of the top field biology stations in the country. He'd like to see it eventually return to what it was in the '60s and '70s, when students were on waiting lists for a chance to study there.

To do that, though, the facilities need to be improved, he says. Many of the buildings were built in the 1940s and '50s. Foundations are cracking, roofs and siding are in need of replacement, and telecommunication improvements are sorely needed.

Biesboer is working on installing a high-speed T1 line for Internet access. Another initiative is the new Lake Itasca Student Center, which would replace the main assembly hall and combine an auditorium, the library, a conference room, social areas for students, and offices.

Attracting students is Biesboer's main objective, which can be accomplished with the CBS freshman initiative. Next year, CBS is hoping to have 60 freshman biology students bused up to the station for an intense, 10-day, retreat-like biology orientation course. They'll get a taste of field biology and the station, which should bolster Itasca recruiting efforts. "Once they come up here we think they'll come back," Biesboer says.

Students are being recruited through advertising, as well. The station has its own Web site and brochures, and it's being talked up at seminars and conferences. It's tough, Biesboer says, trying to compete with genetics, biotech, neuroscience, and cloning. "Students are attracted to those programs because they're getting so much publicity," he says. "So we're trying to get their attention."

He's not stopping at just attracting biology students, though. Biesboer wants to open the doors to all University students and faculty, to make it an all-University facility. "We have to keep it busy," he says. "If we have a new, attractive education center, I think we can get a lot more departments up here."

And, as many of the University faculty who have been teaching at the station for decades are retiring, "We need to attract new, young faculty members to pass that knowledge on to," Biesboer says.

"Field stations like this one are really very important," he adds. "Where else can you go from studying molecular biology to studying an entire forest? The only place to do that is right here at the station. We don't want that to slip away."

by Geoff Gorvin