Academic and Student News

There is a lot of pressure here to sum up the semester in grand and meaningful style for this last News from the Field, but

Tim Farkas, Blaine Carnes, Dylan Atchley, Jeff Carroll, and Lindsay Phillips. Photo by Preston Bruce.

since we are running around trying to wrap up the semester and enjoy the last few days here, an abbreviated version will have to suffice!

With the end of field work and the sweet relief from scrub itch, stinging trees, and wait-a-whiles, the students hit the lab, the books, the computers, the library, and internet e-journal databases…hard over the past two weeks.

The Center has been a busy hive of students analyzing data, writing, revising, writing more, revising again, and generally working hard to create a comprehensive and unique Directed Research (DR) project to be beautifully bound, and stored “for the long term posterity of the future,” as we like to jokingly say around the Center for Rainforest Studies.

With the weighty task of providing knowledge to future generations you would think these students would have no time for any fun. However in between all this hard work, they tackled the climb of Mt. Bartle Frere, the tallest peak in Queensland, went for many runs around Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine, and had a twilight barbeque on the shores of Lake Eacham.

In terms of academics, today was a day that will live forever in SFS history; it was the first inaugural planting for carbon sequestration on the Center's property. Students and staff began the reforestation of some of the denuded areas around the Center, by planting over 300 trees, representing about 60 different species, all in the name of working towards carbon neutrality, while enhancing biodiversity.

Jeff Carroll, Max Margolius, and Casey Venzon. Photo by Ian Breckheimer.

Over the next couple of days, with Directed Research papers handed in, presentations given, and posters completed, the students will be busy saying goodbye to their home at the Center and in the Atherton Tablelands. Tomorrow they will take a farewell tour around some of the many waterfalls in the area, eat lunch at a café at a biodynamic, organic dairy farm, and just generally relax and reflect on their time here in Australia. Following this farewell tour, we will hold a community night at the Lake Eacham Hotel in Yungaburra, where some students will present the findings of their DRs to the community. After all that, there is just enough time to pack before our farewell dinner and the early morning drive to Cairns International Airport where our students will take off to all corners of the world: Fiji, New Zealand, Sydney, Alice Springs, Hawaii, or straight back to wherever home might be!

Well, enough from me. I will turn this over to some students now for some parting words! Ellen Reid, Student Affairs Manager

Student Reflections

Over the past week, the Directed Research group for the Socioeconomic Environmental Policy course finished up their

Kaitlin Burke. Photo by Lili Schemadovits-Norris

research projects, created posters, gave seminars, and put the finishing touches on the past month's work here at CRS. Different than the other DR projects, this project – centering on a carbon neutral plan for CRS – involved each of the students contributing a different aspect of the project in order that all of them together form a unified whole. Towards that end, the presentations were especially interesting, as one by one listeners received a complete picture of what a plan to make CRS carbon neutral would look like. This plan included calculation of all current CRS emissions and abatement and offsetting possibilities for those emissions done by Casey Venzon, the biodiversity benefits of rainforest planting as opposed to a monoculture planting by Dylan Atchley and others. Socially, the DR group commonly known as the “ballerz” has celebrated the end of their hard work not only on this Directed Research project, but over the course of the entire program. We had a great barbeque at nearby Lake Eacham, spent valuable time with members of other DR groups, and in fact played a lot of basketball at the cute little court here at CRS. Overall, it's been a great and fulfilling week and will be very sad to leave. Max Margolius, Skidmore College

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