A SURVEY OF UNDERGRADUATE ORNITHOLOGY COURSES IN NORTH AMERICA

The Committee on Undergraduate Education of the Wilson Ornithological Society conducted a survey of ornithology courses in North America as a service for teachers of ornithology. Our survey of 26 responses uncovered 26 creative approaches to teaching ornithology. Nonetheless, a number of commonalities exist. Courses at small colleges and large universities include both lecture and laboratory components and usually extend into the spring. Most courses emphasize anatomy and physiology, nesting, evolution of birds, ecology, and flight, with other topics receiving few or no lectures. Almost 60% of the courses include student dissection or faculty demonstration. Some courses use preserved birds, others use birds that died accidentally, and one uses roasted chickens that are eaten as part of the skeleto-muscular dissection. Laboratory sessions emphasize taxonomy and identification of local and, often, world birds. Most schools have at least a small collection of specimens available for student use. Courses usually include an extensive project and written work. We hope the results of the survey will stimulate discussion among teachers of ornithology as we seek to develop new ideas for our courses. Received 29 Sept. 1997, accepted 8 Jan. 1999. The Wilson Ornithological Society’ s Committee on Undergraduate Education seeks to increase the quality of teaching of ornithology at the undergraduate level and to foster communication among ornithology teachers about successful and unsuccessful aspects of their courses. With these goals in mind, we prepared a questionnaire that was sent to all ornithology faculty who responded to a request printed in the Ornithological Societies of North America newsletter. The following is a synthesis of the information provided by the 26 ornithologists who completed the questionnaire in 1993 and 1994. Some respondents left one or more questions unanswered, thus our analysis of some questions is based on fewer than 26 responses. The questionnaire included demographic and course content questions. Copies of all completed responses are available from the Van Tyne Library at the University of Michigan. We first describe the demographics of our sample, then summarize the quantitative data, and close with a discussion of successful and unsuccessful aspects of the courses. ’ Dept. of Zoology, Ohio Wesleyan Univ., Delaware, OH 43015. * Dept. of Biology, Colby College, Waterville, ME 04901. 3 Corresponding author; E-mail: [email protected] DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE RESPONDENTS’ INSTITUTIONS Our small sample is not amenable to multivariate analysis. Furthermore, because it is based on only 26 respondents, our survey may be biased. Our intent is to document the diversity of approaches and stimulate discussion. The 26 responses to the survey came from ornithology teachers in 18 states and 1 Canadian province. Thirteen of the respondents teach at schools in the Eastern Time zone, 11 at schools in the Central Time zone, and 2 in schools in the Mountain Time zone. We received no data from faculty teaching at schools in the Western Time zone. Of the 24 schools in the Eastern and Central Time zones, 5 are in southern states. Fifteen of the colleges and universities are located in small towns, whereas 11 have suburban or urban campuses. Sixteen of the respondents teach at state-supported, public institutions; 7 teach at privately supported, non-denominational colleges or universities; and 3 teach at churchaffiliated colleges. Twelve of the schools offer the Ph.D., 4 the M.Sc. as their highest degree, and the remaining 10 offer only bachelors’ degrees. Twelve schools have more than 10,000 undergraduates, hereafter referred to as large schools, and 14 schools have fewer than 10,000 (small schools); 7 of these have 2,000 or fewer.