On September 26^th, 2016, six Millersville University Environmental Biology students (Rachel Malampy, Kira Klaassen, Maggie Wallner, Zoe Zentner, Brendon Miller and Anthony Kessler) joined Dr. Aaron Haines for a day of Workshop training Sessions at Penn State Du Bois.  This event was hosted by the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Wildlife Society with the purpose of offering professional development educational opportunities for natural resource biologists working in Pennsylvania, including State and Federal agencies, Private consulting groups and Academics.

Workshops were also open to students, of which, Millersville University students attended training workshops dealing with Mist-netting and Bird Banding, Non-lethal Methods in Wildlife Damage Control, Speed Training in Wetland Delineation, Raising and Tagging Monarch Butterflies, New Geospatial and Sensor Technologies for Quantifying Animal Behavior, Plant Identification for Biologists and an Introduction to Bat Sampling Technology.

This was the first time such an event has been hosted in the state.  The goal is that future field day professional development opportunities will continue to become available to students.  Funds for Millersville student travel to this event were provided by the Hummelstown Shooting Association and Field and Stream Association.

The Pennsylvania Master Naturalist program is a statewide partnership initiative that aims to connect people with their local ecosystems through intensive natural science training and local conservation service work.  It is designed to teach adult participants about the natural history and ecology of Pennsylvania’s diverse ecoregions.

As a service learning project, students from the Millersville Conservation Biology class helped set up a mammal workshop for the Pennsylvania Master Naturalist program.  Students set out small mammal traps and remote cameras to survey mammal species at the Climber’s Run Nature Preserve.  Below are some of the results from this effort.