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"The schools in which I was educated were by most standards first-rate. But they
were, as our schools generally are, indifferent to the place and to the culture in
which they operated. Among my science courses, I took two full years of biology, but I never learned that
the beautiful meadow at the bottom of my family's pasture was remnant virgin prairie.
We did not spend, so far as I can rememeber, a single hour on prairies -- the landscape
in which we were immersed -- in two years of biological study."
Paul Gruchow
It is with great pleasure that I present volume 5 of Tillers. The idea for this
journal was stimulated by two significant events at
Grinnell College, the inauguration of the Center for Prairie Studies and changes in the
Biology Department's curriculum. The former is a college-wide effort to connect faculty
and students with our prairie place -- geographically, biologically, historically, and
aesthetically. It seeks to undermine our tendency to ignore the lessons of our own
locales, and thus cultivate in ourselves an appreciation of place, wherever that may
come to be. Concurrently, the Biology Department began a series of changes in
curriculum that further emphasize active learning. As one of several sections of
Introduction to Biological Inquiry, Prairie Restoration will introduce students to basic
concepts in biology while emphasizing the ways that biologists ask questions, test
hypotheses through observation and experimentation, and communicate their results.
Our goal is to provide beginning students with a sense of the excitement -- and the
ambiguities -- of authentic research. The journal creates a community of learning
across the years, allowing students to build upon and modify the studies of their
predecessors -- just like scientists!
This year, students in the class fully embraced the idea of ecology as an experimental
science. Research groups collected different kinds of data on two long-term management
experiments in the prairie and forest and two groups undertook greenhouse experimental
studies. In addition, we continued the tradition of including aquatic studies, this time
using biological assessment to assess impacts of teh CERA's neighboring confined
animal feeding operation. Students also had the opportunity to reflect on teh way the
scientific study of prairies had altered their perceptions, with help from visiting alumna
and artist Rachel Melis.
I owe great thanks to Sue Kolbe, Larissa Mottl, and Anna Larimer for their assistance in teaching
the class. Thanks as well to Steph Peterson, who typeset both the print and web
versions of the journal and helped with other technical issues during the semester.
Enduring thanks to Chris Caruso, who was my co-conspirator in developing the course.
The title of the journal is meant to evoke consideration of the interaction between the botanical,
agricultural, and aesthetic histories of the tallgrass prairie. I leave it to the reader to
discover these meanings.
Jonathan Brown, Editor
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