 OTS News
|
|
Please remember OTS when making your charitable gifts this holiday season.
To support our incredibly dedicated students and researchers before the end of the 2012 tax year, you have several options that you can choose, but you must choose one before midnight on Monday, December 31. Tax receipts for the calendar year 2012 will be issued based on the following conditions:
Online
Your donation must be processed online before by 11:59 pm EST on December 31, 2012 through our online giving webpage.
 By Mail
Checks
Your donation must be postmarked by the US Postal Service on or before Dec. 31, 2012 and received in our office before noon on January 3, 2013.
Credit Cards
Credit card donations sent by postal mail must be received and processed in our office on or before noon on Friday, December 28, 2012.
By Phone
You can call OTS directly at 919.684.6188 or 919.684.6969 or email us at jgiles@duke.edu or cathleen.lemoine@duke.edu Monday through Friday 9 AM to 5 PM. The OTS office will be closed on December 24, 25, 31 and January 1.
Stocks
Securities delivered via Depository Trust Company (DTC) must be in the Duke University account before the close of business on Monday, 12/31/12. Donors should be careful to give their brokers time to complete the transaction. This usually requires a minimum of 3 business days, but may take longer if volumes are high. Please notify Duke via the online stock transfer form - www.stockgifts.duke.edu - or by calling 919.684.2338.
Together we can make a difference!
|
Tropical Biology 2013-3
Tropical Biology: An Ecological Approach (also known as the Fundamental's Course)is an intensive, eight-week, field-immersive experience for graduate students. Tropical Biology was the first course offered by OTS and has continued to evolve over the past 50 years while training a legion of biologists. During the course, students visit diverse field sites throughout Costa Rica and gain invaluable experience learning tropical flora and fauna, designing field problems, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting results in both oral presentations and written reports.
We have been told that students in this course frequently form lifelong contacts and friendships in the field of tropical ecology. This course will enhance a graduate student's career, by introducing him or her to potential dissertation topics, providing him or her with the tools needed to undertake such a research project.
Additionally, as part of the celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of OTS and the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), all students attending the Tropical Biology 2013-3 course will receive full fellowships to attend the ATBC-OTS meeting in San José. This will be an especially exciting conference with many opportunities to interact with top tropical biologists from around the world.
Application Form
Course Flyer
Summer Session: June 07-July 29, 2013.
Arrive June 6, depart July 30, 2013.
Final application deadline: February 1, 2013 followed by Open Enrollment/rolling admission until course is full.
|
Rosebank Elementary School Students Support OTS
 We are pleased to recognize the students from Rosebank Elementary School in Chula Vista, California! For the past three years they have been making contributions to the La Selva Adopt-a-Trail program and, to date, have raised more than $3,100. The Adopt-a-Trail program supports La Selva's environmental education activities as well as helps to maintain the station's trails and infrastructure for researchers and students studying the rainforest.
 Specifically, the students in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) Program at the school raised these funds by participating in an annual service learning project focused on tropical forests under the direction of teacher Carrol Fleming. According to Fleming, the project begins with the students designing lesson plans related to the rainforest. This year, as the project progressed, the students created paintings of plants and animals on canvas; last year they created clay sculptures. Each year the Rosebank
cafeteria is transformed into an art gallery where parents, teachers and members of the Chula Vista community can bid on the artwork. "People are always talking about doing something," wrote Ms. Fleming, "but we decided we actually would do something to protect the forest. The children chose to support OTS and La Selva because they believe in your mission."
We thank the students in the GATE program at Rosebank Elementary and are honored that La Selva was chosen as the recipient of their efforts. We hope one day they have the opportunity to visit the station and see what the researchers and students have been able to accomplish as a result of their support!
|
 |
OTS 2013-2014 Graduate Course Schedule Now Available
| |
|
|
OTS Employment Opportunities
NAPIRE Renewed - Call for Research Mentors
 With renewed funding from NSF and the LSAMP (Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation) Program, under the direction of Dr. A. James Hicks, OTS is pleased to announce that for the next three years we will be able to continue to provide a unique and intensive field research experience for Native American and Pacific Islander undergraduate students at the Las Cruces Biological Station in southern Costa Rica. We are most grateful to the LSAMP Program at NSF and to Dr. Hicks for his strong and active support for this program.
Now OTS is seeking qualified research-mentors to provide personal, direct guidance for one-to-three NAPIRE students in field research at Las Cruces. This includes hands-on participation in helping students develop an answerable research question, appropriate research design, data collection methods, statistical analysis of the results, and write the scientific paper and presentation of the research. In addition, research mentors will also participate in symposium, evaluations and ethics discussions. The research program dates are June 24 to August 5, 2013 and all expenses will be covered for this volunteer mentoring position. For more information please visit www.ots.ac.cr/napire or email wendy.townsend@ots.ac.cr.
|
|
Spring Recruiting Schedule
In January, the Enrollment Management Team will begin recruiting for the coming Summer and Fall sessions. This summer, we are offering one session of Tropical Biology in Costa Rica and two sessions of Global Health in South Africa. In the Fall, we are offering semester programs in Tropical Biology, Global Health, and African Ecology and Conservation. Word-of-mouth continues to be one of the most effective ways to reach qualified students and we ask for your help in identifying potential students for our undergraduate programs.We can provide several resources to help you promote OTS programs:
- PowerPoint demonstration to show during lectures
- Sample email text to send to your departmental list-serv.
Please contact otsadmissions@duke.edu
for more information.
Tentative Campus Visit Schedule
Below is a list of planned campus visit for the Spring 2013. We would be happy to speak to your students during a campus visit. To schedule a classroom presentation or information session, just email us. If you have suggestions on how to best reach students on your campus, please let us know. Your support is vital to our having a great recruiting season and we appreciate your efforts.
Duke University
University of North Carolina
North Carolina State University
Davidson
Cornell (Jan. 30)
Syracuse
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Marist
Clarkson
Skidmore (Feb. 6th)
Holy Cross
Providence
Pitt
Trinity
Austin College
UT-Austin
Southwestern
University of Houston
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Franklin & Marshall
Lafayette
Xavier (Jan. 23rd)
Dillard
Loyola Marymount University - N.O.
Tulane
Emory
Berry College
Morehouse
University of the South
University of TN
Vanderbilt
St. Augustine's
NC Central University
Colorado College
University of Colorado-Boulder
Santa Clara University
Stanford
University of Puerto Rico
|
Station Updates
|
Capacity Building in Modern Taxonomy at La Selva
Funding has been approved for a new project in aquatic invertebrate taxonomy through DNA Barcoding through the Museum of Natural history and Archaeology of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Funded by the Norwegian Directorate of Nature Management, the project includes taxonomic workshops in Norway, South Africa and Costa Rica that will teach participants the newest technologies in DNA Barcoding applied to aquatic organisms. We expect the Costa Rican workshop to be held at the La Selva Biological Station during the third quarter of 2013. The workshop will invite aquatic invertebrate experts and institutional representatives from a variety of Central American organizations that have aquatic invertebrate programs. The applications of this technology will strengthen the capacity of the invited organizations and participants in the use of modern taxonomic technologies applied to taxonomic inventories, the development of strong bioindicator indices and increase our knowledge of the region's freshwater invertebrate fauna.
 Fig. 1. An unidentified species of non-biting midge (Diptera: Chironomidae) from La Selva.
The project will join international efforts in DNA barcoding such as CBOL (www.barcodeoflife.org) and the International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL, http://ibol.org), and every single month 40-60 new scientific studies utilizing DNA-based identification are published. The iBOL project currently involves 29 nations from all continents and has a goal of producing 5 mill barcodes of 500 000 species 2 by 2015. The Barcode of Life Data Systems (http://boldsystems.org) is used as an open access depository of DNA barcodes and associated meta-data and currently holds more than 2 mill sequences from about 300,000 species/barcode clusters.
Participants and experts will be invited in the next few weeks as the project develops.
Fig. 2. Taxonomy's challenge of describing and identifying species: Less than 20% of the estimated numbers of extant species are formally described. Challenges are largest for invertebrates, fungi and several groups of single-cell organisms (named "other"). Chapman AD (2009) Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World, 2. ed. Australian Biodiversity Information Services, Toowomba, Australia. (http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/2009/index.html).
|
External News
|
Torrey Botanical Society Award Deadline
 The Torrey Botanical Society supports student training with an annual award of $1,000. Undergraduate and graduate students in botany who are members of the Society are eligible to apply for this award. The award must be used to help pay the cost of taking courses at a biological field station. Applications will be judged by a committee of the Council of the Society, and recipients will be announced before 1 April each year.
The deadline for award applications is December 31. For more information, visit their website: www.torreybotanical.org and go to the Grants & Awards page.
|
|
|
|
