2006-2007 - The Field Museum

graduate student advising and dissertation supervision. Among the graduate students mentored and
advised by Field Museum curators is a core group of graduate students whose work is squarely based in
The Field Museum’s collections and labs. During the past year The Field Museum provided training in
collections-based research to 70 resident graduate students, from the University of Chicago, the
University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola University, DePaul University, and Southern Illinois
University, as well as the University of Michigan, the University of Essen, Germany, and Chulalongkorn
University,Thailand.
PROFESSIONAL AND FIELD-BASED TRAINING
Stones and Bones: A Course in Paleontological Research Methods and Field Work. For the past
three summers Lance Grande (Senior Vice President and Head of Collections and Research) has taught
a field course to a small group of advanced placement high school and undergraduate college students.
The four-week course is run through the University of Chicago and The Field Museum and covers
paleontological theory, method and practice. The course begins at The Field Museum, where the
students spend a week learning about fossil collections and the type of research conducted here,
followed by two weeks of hands-on paleontological field work in the mountain desert near Kemmerer,
Wyoming, one of the world's most spectacular fossil sites. In their final week, back at The Field Museum,
students focus on preparation, study and analysis of the collected material and incorporation of the
specimens into the permanent Museum collection. In 2006, eight students participated in the program.
Ecology Training Program/Université d'Antananarivo. The Field Museum and World Wildlife Fund
(WWF) Madagascar are joint collaborators in a training program that provides field and classroom training
in the biological sciences for Malagasy graduate students through a program of field research in
Madagascar, seminars and courses at the Université d’Antananarivo, and collections work at the
Museum. Since its inception in 1993, the effort has resulted in over 80 Malagasy students earning higher
degrees within the national university system in the fields of zoology and conservation biology. These
graduates are obtaining important posts in the non-government and government sectors on Madagascar
and are rapidly advancing conservation programs on the island. In addition, more than 300 Malagasy
students have taken part in field trips and field schools, and the program has yielded more than 400
scientific publications. Considerable effort has also been devoted to building the collections at the
Université d'Antananarivo museum.
NSF PEET projects. The PEET program (Partnerships for the Enhancement of Expertise in Taxonomy),
the National Science Foundation’s response to ever-shrinking expertise in “whole organism” biology,
makes major grants to support intensive studies of “under-studied” organisms, with training a major
component of each project. Projects provide comprehensive training in collections-based, monographic
studies for postdoctoral associates, graduate students, and undergraduate interns. The Field Museum
had five PEET grants underway in 2006:
• Margaret Thayer (Zoology): “Monography, Phylogeny, and Historical Biogeography of Austral
Staphylinidae (Coleoptera).”
• Sabine Huhndorf (Botany): “Monographs of Two Key Genera and Family-Level Phylogeny
(Fungi, Ascomycetes, Sordariales).” (This is the second PEET grant held by this investigator.)
• Rüdiger Bieler (Zoology): “Bivalves: Research, Training, Electronic Dissemination of Data.”
• Petra Sierwald (Zoology): “The Diplopoda: Research, Taxonomic Training and Computerization.”
Training Programs for Central American Mycology Students and Young Professionals. Robert
Lücking, Collections Manager and Adjunct Curator in Botany, held a course on multivariate analysis of
ecological data in Lima, Peru (Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia) in March and April 2006. The
course was part of the formally credited graduate program at that university and a similar course wil be
offered each year. Lücking also worked closely with the mycology and lichenology curators, technicians,
96