Technical support for needs assessment and curriculum design and implementation in conservation biology
Session Organizers: Eleanor J Sterling, Nora Bynum, and Alison Ormsby
When: July 12-13, 2008

Description:
In early 2008, the ANA section of SCB sent a questionnaire to its 820 members, asking them to prioritize among a number of possible educational initiatives that the section could undertake. The results of this survey (available at http://www.conbio.org/Sections/ANA/) indicated that more than 30% of respondents gave the highest priority ranking to "facilitating technical support for those interested in developing needs assessments and new curricula for conservation biology education in the ANA region". Subsequent discussions within the ANA section and the SCB Education Committee broadened the focus beyond the ANA region to include programs and individuals from contexts where resources may be limiting but the need for conservation education exists, whether this be a university in Africa or Asia, or a small community college or minority-serving institution in the US, or a training program for conservation professionals in South America.

The 2008 SCB conference theme "From the Mountains to the Sea," does not specifically address capacity development; however it does address issues of conservation across ecosystems and ecological transitions, such as we hope would be developed in a well-designed conservation biology program or course. The proposed course is tied directly to the SCB's efforts at broadening its international scope, as emphasized in the most recent strategic plan. It also directly addresses goals of developing conservation capacity among a diverse constituency. This course has the endorsement of the SCB Education Committee (contact Eleanor Sterling, Chair sterling@amnh.org), the ANA section (contact Gerardo Ceballos, President, gceballo@miranda.ecologia.unam.mx) and the Africa section (contact Delali Dovie, President-Elect, delali@biology.wits.ac.za).

We will recruit participants from among the membership of SCB, with particular focus on the ANA, Africa and Asia sections but not excluding applicants from outside these regions. In particular, we will use our existing contacts through SCB, the Ecological Society of America, and our ongoing work at the American Museum of Natural History to identify and recruit participants from minority serving institutions in the US. We will ask applicants to describe their need for the short course at the time of application, and three months before the course we will ask participants to submit more detailed information about their plans so that we can attempt to match needs with experts willing to provide technical support. As we do not have funds to support travel for these experts, we will recruit technical experts from among those already attending SCB 2008. We have already contacted a number of these experts (see partial list enclosed), who have agreed to participate assuming they are able to attend SCB 2008.