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<h3 class="sec_main">Getting Down and Dirty with Science</h3>
<h4>Cedar Point Experience Shapes Young Biologists' Lives</h4>
<p>Scrambling along the musty, dry lake bed, the scavengers descend on logs and crusty chunks of cattle manure.</p>
<p>"You guys ready to flip over this cow pie?" called biology major Heidi Baumert to her classmates. It was still somewhat moist, so the women hesitate, hinting only momentarily at dread.</p>
<p>"You've got to love to get your hands dirty," said Baumert. "That's what this class is about. You have to get your hands in there."</p>
<p>Buckets and jars fill with insects that the young scientist hope are infected with parasites. With luck, the students will find microscopic parasitic intruders in their specimens. And back at their lab, they will compare cricket parasites to those of damsel and dragonflies netted at nearby Dunwoody Pond.</p>
<p>This is field parasitology at Cedar Point Biological Station, UNL's field research site that nestles among the arid sandstone bluffs, cedar canyons, shortgrass prairie, lakes and springs near Lake Ogallala. In their final days of a summer five-week class, the students are accustomed to the dirt, heat, muck and the associated exhausting physical rigor that comes with participation in this twice-a-week class.</p>
<p>"It's a good time," said student Josh Krejci, also a biology major. "It's the best way you can spend your tuition dollars. By far. You're actually getting out here and doing things instead of listening."</p>
<p>That was the intent of John Janovy and his colleagues Brent Nickol and Gary Hergenrader who more than 30 years ago took over a former Girl Scout camp to arrange a scholarly refuge for university students, researchers and instructors. They envisioned a place where biology could be experienced. Over the years the station has grown from its original 30 acres to a two-square-mile site with 19 buildings comprising student and faculty living units, labs and a central lodge. During the summer, as many as 70 people a day sleep, eat and study at Cedar Point, working around the clock.</p>
<p>Hosting classes like field parasitology, aquatic microbiology, prairie ecology; and research projects on birds, parasites, and insect herbivory, today's Cedar Point enjoys a wide reputation. Students emerge from their summer studies as field scientists.</p>
<p>"In 1983 I was an undergraduate out here, and took two classes. That would change all my career goals and why I was a biology major," said Richard Alward, a biologist and former associate director at Cedar Point. "I realized you could get paid for doing biology in the field. Here, you get out and find the organisms. You know their whole environment. It's not just microscope work or preserved organisms from a catalog."</p>
<p>Baumert, Krejci and the other 20 students spent about three hours that August 2000 morning collecting specimens at three sites, using dip nets and their bare hands, wading into streams and greenish ponds, while scores of wild turkeys ran, a rattle snake was uncovered in the log brush, mosquitos bit and dust stuck to sweaty brows. After the group returned to the lodge for lunch, they spent the afternoon under Janovy's watchful eye dissecting their catches, creating slides, and tediously sorting and characterizing the identifiable parasites found inside insect families. Following the evening meal, the students returned to their slides and did several hours of computer -matrix conversion for the parasite characteristics.</p>
<p>Their day had started at 7 a.m. and ended about 10 that night. Many would be up for several hours more preparing for aquatic microbiology the next day, with lights burning into the early morning hours.</p>
<p>Meals together and round-the-clock study at the station prompt a different view of the possibilities of biology, the teachers and students said.</p>
<p>"One thing you get at Cedar Point that you don't get anywhere else is such a high degree of interaction with scientists, both in your field but also unrelated to your field," said doctoral candidate Ben Hanelt, a researcher in parasitology. "You get a different perspective here than when you're on main campus or holed up in your lab. You analyze your data and talk about the implications, you see and learn for yourself."</p>
<p>Janovy said access to a diverse environment is what fuels both the scientists' learning and their study.</p>
<p>"When you study microorganisms there is diversity everywhere, but this particular site and the surrounding 100 miles is a very rich source of teaching and research for us," said the biologist, who also uses the Cedar Point landscape and experience as fodder for most of his books. "It's real easy to teach here. There's a lot of stuff. It's all at your fingertips, it's all alive, and it's all in the proper context."</p>
<p>"You can never order a field program from a catalog."</p>
<p>If you could, it might be a lot like Cedar Point.</p>
<p>"Getting away from all the distractions of campus, and being surrounded by like-minded people as much as anything tells us what education ought to be about," Janovy said. "When students are surrounded by peers and are focusing on problems they are interested in, they're seeing the value of studying the material. Not because it is a course requirement, but because it interests them. That's a principle that goes well beyond biology."</p>
<p>"The field program is the place where teaching, research and original experience, and the beauty of nature all merge together, and are inseparable. That's what biology is all about."</p>
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<h4 class="sec_header">More on John Janovy Jr.</h4>
<ul>
<li>Cedar Point<br />
<a href="http://cedarpoint.unl.edu/">http://cedarpoint.unl.edu</a></li>
<li>Faculty Page<br />
<a href="http://www.biosci.unl.edu/faculty/janovy/index.shtml">http://www.biosci.unl.edu/faculty/janovy/index.shtml</a></li>
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