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=The Urban Ecology Virtual Classroom=

This wiki page has been created for a course in Urban Ecology developed and lead by Lucy Hutrya (Boston University) and Melissa McHale (North Carolina State University). This space will initially serve as a communication forum for students, researchers, and guest lecturers participating in a trial virtual seminar series offered Fall semester of 2013. Students at BU and NCSU will hear from leading urban ecologists across the nation and discuss the most pressing socio-ecological issues facing society on an urbanizing planet.

We hope that this virtual classroom will also provide universal, modifiable, and adaptable resources for professors, lecturers, and students at Universities across the United States. With new urban ecology classes emerging at higher education institutions globally, there has been an increasing amount of discussion regarding the appropriate content and resources available for teaching these classes for undergraduate and graduate students. The field of urban ecology is highly interdisciplinary, however, and depending on the institution, college, and department where the course is offered, an urban ecology class may focus more on one of several disciplines. For example, urban ecology taught for a landscape architecture program might emphasize the design of urban landscapes, while a course offered at a forestry school may highlight urban forest health as a central theme. Nonetheless, many of us spend a significant amount of time looking for potential resources and in the end create syllabi with similar content. Potentially this wiki can reduce the time one spends searching for materials, and enhance discussions among urban ecologists initiating stimulating classroom experiences for students.