Technology Technology often gets substituted for critical thinking. We often do experiments because we can, not because it necessarily answers questions we need to ask. On the other hand, new technologies open up areas of investigation previously unavailable. Therefore I try to obtain and incorporate the latest technologies in my courses as long as the tool serves a useful purpose for the students learning. Interdisciplinary Ecology by nature is interdisciplinary.
Environmental problems are also interdisciplinary.
It stands to reason that I place a high priority on a student's ability to incorporate information from many areas in their work, and I in turn approach the subject matter from many disciplines. With that in mind, I co-wrote an interdisciplinary course on how evolution and natural selection have influenced many other academic areas, and have been shaped by the cultures and events of their times. This course is taught by 25 faculty from a dozen departments to all incoming freshmen. Although interdisciplinary approaches are essential, there can be a tendency to forget that ecology encompasses some specific areas of content and approach that are important in their own right. It is at least as important to me that students learn to think ecologically and learn the body of material that constitutes this exciting area of study as it is to apply that approach to other areas.