This past spring semester, Sara Jackrel ’10, a biology major with a concentration in environmental studies, lived an ecologist’s dream when she spent four months studying rainforests in Australia through the School for Field Studies (SFS).
“I had always wanted to go to Australia. I thought it was very important, since I am going into ecology, that I should study rainforests, because there is (so much) bio diversity,” Jackrel said. “And studying rainforest is something really important to have, with going to graduate school. (It was) something I couldn’t do in the U.S.”
Jackrel said she wanted to be able to study an entire rainforest ecosystem and learn what makes it a bio diversity-hot spot.
Through the SFS program, Jackrel took three courses with the other 30 students living at her field station, which was located on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland. The courses—Rainforest Ecology, Principles of Forest Management, and Socioeconomic Values and Environmental Policy—were all taught by professors at the field station. The students also chose, for a fourth course, a directed research group led by one of the professors. Jackrel’s research group allowed her to pursue her specific interest in wildlife.
“We studied a lot of basic ecology that I had covered a little bit while I was here (at TCNJ) for our core classes, but it also went into a lot of the specifics about the animals that are unique to Australia: marsupials, snakes, plants” Jackrel said.
Jackrel also appreciated how socioeconomics was integrated into each topic she learned about, including Australia’s Aboriginal history, how local industries
have changed, and the effects of tourism in the area.
Jackrel was also able to explore other areas of Australia through the program. The group traveled to such places as Cairns, a city about an hour from their field station; the Great Barrier Reef; and the Daintree Rainforest. They were even able to interact with locals through their weekly community service hours.
“I was shocked at how much we traveled. I expected to see some things in the area, but I thought the majority of our time would be at the field station,” Jackrel said. “A lot of our time was spent going to different sites—different rainforests, national parks, agricultural areas, sustainable farms, dairy farms.”
Jackrel said some of her favorite memories were seeing crocodiles along the Daintree River while walking up from the beach and climbing a Strangler Fig to see over the rainforest’s canopy. But her favorite site was seeing cockatoos and parrots flying over the rainforest everyday. She loved waking up to the sun and birds every morning in her cabin.
“The immersion experience is what made [SFS] so unique and really helped you learn where you were living,” she said, adding that the the experience confirmed her plans to study ecology in grad school, where she hopes to spend part of that studying conservation.