Biology Beyond the Classroom: Belize Study Abroad Course Offers Hands-On Experience

Nov. 19, 2024

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences

After a long day of travel to Belize last spring, students experienced the joy of swimming in bioluminescent waters, laughing and yelling to each other in the dark under starlight, with a sense of magic made possible by the chemical peculiarities of an algae that lives in the water.

Biology students again have the chance to discover new environments and species during a study abroad course with Professor Matt Kolmann, who is leading the trip that will take place during spring break.

"What I really wanted students to be able to do is to build a better context. We spend a lot of the time in class in an approachable way, learning what to expect in terms of the plants and animals you will find in Belize, and so when you go into the woods and you are on a hike and see a toucan, you know something about the context of how that animal fits into its environment,” he states. “They are eating certain fruits and seeds; they are helping to disperse those seeds, which helps the plants to spread out. So, we spend a lot of time placing what we are going to see in its proper, natural, context. Why do we see so many species here? What are the roles these species play? It's an interactive experience rather than a transactional one.”

During the trip last year, students also had the chance to snorkel the second largest reef in the world.

“The cool thing about life in the ocean is that there's life growing on life,” Kolmann said, “You can swim and see fish, sharks, and stingrays, but you can also spend a ton of time in one place, on the reef, staring at a square foot patch. The more you sit there and the more things get acclimated to you, you start seeing really neat stuff – little shrimp or seeing animals interact, like two paired angel fish protecting their territory, or trying to court, and cleaner fish that are cleaning other fish; it’s a really cool thing because you can take it at your own pace and digest anything you want to see.”

Students who participate in this course will gain valuable skills that can be applied to their future careers as biologists, whether they pursue working for state fish and game commissions, the Environmental Protection Agency, or with private consulting firms. Last year, three students decided that they wanted to pursue careers as tropical field biologists as a result of participating in the Belize course.

“Being able to identify species is very important for biologists, or civil engineers who work on rehabilitating streams, for example, and so you are learning some basic ways to determine, ‘What is that species?’” Kolmann said. “We spend two days at an ecological field station and students get involved in data collection – using radio telemetry to track turtles to see what they do and where they go during the day. They get to use camera traps to survey big mammals, big cats and pigs, and they get to do micro aquatic invertebrate work to look at the health of streams. And they get to do bird-banding, which is a way of tracking bird migrations, and mist-netting for bats.”

The cost of the course and experience is $3,000, which covers food, all lodging, transportation, and flights. Students can apply financial aid toward the course. The group will depart the weekend of March 8 (spring break) and return the following weekend. Interested students should register for the course, Tropical Biodiversity & Conservation in Belize (BIOL-390-01) now, and can reach out to Kolmann or Olive Dreckman for more information.

In addition to expanding their biology skills in the field, students will have the chance to expand their perspectives and discover ancient civilizations and histories. When scaling the Maya pyramids, students will be guided by direct descendants.

“The more humbling part of that is learning from the guides that that civilization or state collapsed because of horrendous environmental degradation, and so when you look around from the top of the pyramid, you see forest in all directions,” Kolmann said. “And you realize when the Maya were at their peak, that was all clear-cut, farmed land. And so, I think it puts a lot of things in perspective: the same problems the ancient Maya dealt with, we are dealing with now – rampant environmental change, coupled with climate change, and it shows we are dealing with the same problems but (hopefully) we can learn from it.”

Becoming a global citizen and experiencing personal growth is yet another benefit of participating.

“If you go into it in an unassuming way, you come out of it as a freer-thinking individual with a better sense of how you fit not just in Kentucky, but in the world,” he said.

For more information, email Matt Kolmann or Olive Dreckman.