Hartnett Endowment Ignites Ecosystem Recovery Research

The John C. Hartnett Endowment was established in 2000 by Paul A. Lachance, Ph.D. (’55) and Therese Lachance to honor Professor Emeritus John C. Hartnett (’43) for his dedication to excellence in teaching and his outstanding influence on biology and other students at St. Michael’s College for forty-four years. The endowment provides funds to support student-faculty research opportunities, and when the endowment was first established there were very few funding sources to support student research - especially full-time research for the summer. Therefore, the Hartnett Endowment became a very important means of supporting summer research students for quite a few years.

Thanks to the support of our generous alumni, the Hartnett Endowment has grown considerably. In addition, in more recent years our faculty and students have had success in attracting other funding sources to support summer research, thereby increasing the overall amount of summer research activity in the Biology Department, but without drawing heavily on the increasing funds in the Endowment. This year, however, the Hartnett Endowment will provide a huge boost in kicking off a new research initiative in the Biology Department.

For several years, our Biology Department has had a cooperative research relationship with Camp Johnson, the Army National Guard facility adjacent to our campus. The Camp Johnson property supports the largest remaining stand of sandplain forest in Vermont, a forest community that thrives in sandy, low-nutrient soils and that requires regular fires to be sustained. As part of the long-term management plan, some sections of the Camp Johnson sandplain forest were burned in the mid to late 1990s. Each fall for the last six years, our students taking BI 151 (Introduction to Ecology and Evolution) have studied plants and invertebrates in both the burned and unburned sections of the forest to see how they differ.

In a new research initiative made possible by support from the Hartnett Endowment, a new section of the forest will be burned in spring of 2013. This not only will provide an outstanding research opportunity, but it also will benefit the management and maintenance of this rare forest community. To provide background information needed for future studies of forest recovery, Devin Latremore (’14), Nicholas Salvas (’15), Jennifer Labrenz (’13), and Aerielle Matsangos (’15) (in photo, left to right), and will be working with professors Valerie Banschbach and Peter Hope in the summer of 2012 to study the plant and invertebrate communities in areas to be burned in 2013 and in adjacent sections of the forest. In addition, our first-year students taking BI 151 in the fall of 2012 will also be providing critical foundation data in preparation for the burn.

This new research initiative, which includes collaboration among the St. Michael’s Biology Department, Camp Johnson, the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and The Nature Conservancy, will provide a living laboratory of sandplain forest recovery right next door – something that students and faculty will be studying for years, and perhaps decades, to come.

Thank You...

...to the many accepted students and their families who came to visit us this past Monday (Feb 27). We had a great crowd, filling a large function room, and with lots of good questions on a wide range of topics - internship opportunities, pre-health advising, study abroad, career preparation, the basic biology curriculum, general academic advising....things that you should be asking before making a decision on where to attend college in the fall. For more information about our program, please visit the Biology Department Website.

I also appreciate the fact that several of you took advantage of some time at the end of the day to visit our department, look around, and ask some more questions before you left campus. Thanks for your interest in St. Mike's - and best wishes wherever you decide to go in the fall. I hope that we will see some of you here.

For those who were not there - have no fear! There are additional Accepted Student Academic Days on March 7 and March 26, and also Accepted Student Open Houses plannd for April 14 and 21. If you'd like more information, please contact the Admissions Office.

Anna Michael ('07) now in veterinary practice in Minnesota

I just received this piece of exciting news about Anna Michael, who graduated from the SMC Biology program in 2007, went to veterinary school at the University of Minnesota, earned Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and Masters of Public Health degrees, and has now taken over a veterinary clinic in the "Land of 10,000 Lakes".

Congratulations and best wishes to Anna !!

Happy Holidays

With the fall semester behind us, I'd like to wish everyone the best for the upcoming holidays and new year. Our fall was quite busy, with well-attended admissions events in October and November, both of which included a Biology Department Open House.

Read about some of our other recent news and activities in the Fall 2011 edition of Biology Matters, our e-newsletter, which is now available.

Another chance...

This Saturday, November 12, is another Fall Academic Preview Day. Please come to campus and check us out - we've got a lot to offer. The Biology Department will hold an "Open House" after the Department presentations in the late afternoon to provide an informal opportunity to visit our facilities, see what we're all about, and speak with some students and faculty. We hope to see you there...

You can also learn more about us through our Biology Department web page. There you can link to a short YouTube video featuring recent alumni talking about their SMC experience within our program. You can also look at where some of our alumni are, and the careers that they've entered. And you can link to our e-newsletter, Biology Matters which we publish each spring and fall.

Who goes there?

Guest Blogger: Professor Declan McCabe

How can biologists efficiently collect enough observations to draw conclusions about mammal abundance or diversity in a habitat? This is exactly the problem my students and I tackled in the Saint Michael's College Community Ecology course in the last two weeks. Attempting to observe shy mammals can be disappointing, particularly when moving through a habitat as a group of 20. Instead, our approach was to record mammal footprints at track stations.

Our track stations included a layer of powdered black chalk to blacken the feet of the mammals and a sheet of sticky contact paper to collect each chalky print. All of this was sheltered from rain in a plastic tunnel-shaped structure with an opening at one end. Students determined which habitats to study and we left several track stations in each habitat. We convinced the mammals that walking through chalk and onto contact paper was a good idea by baiting the stations with peanut butter or dog biscuits.

We recorded a total of 355 visits to our 31 track stations over a two week period. We have indeed confirmed that the campus is a grey squirrel and chipmunk haven! Prints were also left by skunks, raccoons, muskrats, and mice. One of the stations with rather smudged prints also contained several black hairs. Microscopic scale patterns on the hairs confirmed our suspicions that the nocturnal visitor was a skunk. Perhaps most interesting, the traps set by the Winooski River were visited by mink; perhaps many mink, or perhaps just one extremely well fed mink with a deep fondness for peanut butter and dog biscuits.

Come and Visit!

Fall is a great time to come and visit - and we've got lots to show you.

It is beginning to feel a bit more fall-ish these days - shorter days and cooler nights.... a few leaves starting to turn colors. And another sign of the season - visitors, and lots of them. High school students with their parents, touring the campus, stopping in to visit, talking and emailing us with questions about our programs. And we love it - students doing their homework and looking closely into potential colleges..... looking for the right match, the place that "feels right".

If you are interested in learning more about us - please visit our Bio Department web page. There you can link to a short YouTube video featuring recent alumni talking about their SMC experience within our program. You can also look at where some of our alumni are, and the careers that they've entered. And you can link to our e-newsletter, "Biology Matters" which we publish each spring and fall.

Consider visiting during one of upcoming Academic Preview Days (October 8 and November 12)- contact our Admissions Office for more information. And on both of those dates, we plan to have a Bio Department "Open House" at the end of the afternoon's planned events. So stop by, meet some of our students.... and make yourself feel at home.