Field Courses

**We are delighted to announce the field course plans for the Department of Integrative Biology for 2023. Two on-site, fourth-year field courses taught by Guelph faculty are currently planned: ZOO​*4300 in St. Andrews, NB and BIOL*4410 Section 01 in Algonquin Park, ON. Guelph will also be participating in the Ontario Universities Program in Field Biology. Students must apply for these courses by Jan. 27, 2023. Students will need to adhere to all COVID-related protocols, including vaccination requirements for in-person instruction and for accommodations at field stations. Field course plans may need to be adjusted according to the public health situation.***

 

OVERVIEW:

Details regarding our field courses vary from year to year and course to course, so you should attend the field course information session in November, 2022. Students must be pre-registered for the course before going on the trip. All three Guelph field courses (ZOO*4300, BIOL*4410 and BIOL*4610) MUST be registered for in the following Fall semester (2023). Please check on WebAdvisor that you have been registered before leaving for the course. To ensure this, you must submit a completed Course Waiver Request Form with your application, and then we will register you in the appropriate course and semester. If you are unclear as to the experiential learning opportunities, please see the Experiential Learning Course Decision Tree. If you are clear you want to take a field course but are unsure as to which category of field course to take, please see this Field Course Decision Tree. 

Please note: All in-person field courses have the same application deadline (usually the last Friday in January). For 2023, all applications for the on-site courses are due by January 27, 2023. However, ONLY OUPFB (Ontario Universities Program in Field Biology) field course applications are ranked on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Guelph courses are not - all applications are looked over by the course instructor, and they select the successful applicants. You CANNOT obtain a reserved spot in the Guelph courses, only (potentially) in the OUPFB courses.

 

INFORMATION SESSION:

Three information sessions for the field courses for 2023 were held in mid-late November of 2022. The topics covered were:

 

COURSES:

ZOO*4300 Marine Biology & Oceanography (0.75 credit)

BIOL*4410 Field Ecology (Algonquin Park) (0.75 credit)

BIOL*4410 Field Ecology, Section 02 (remote format) (0.75 credit)

BIOL*4610 Arctic Ecology (Currently suspended for 2023 - 0.75 credit)

BIOL*4700, 4800 and/or 4900 The Ontario Universities Program in Field Biology (OUPFB)

BIOL*2300 Field Course In Biodiversity (Currently suspended for 2023 - files below are provided for interest and reflect only previous years)

 

OUPFB logoThe Ontario Universities Program in Field Biology (OUPFB) is the brain child of the Biology Departments of Ontario Universities and provides a method to pool field course resources. Since field courses are expensive to offer and are very faculty and staff intensive, the Ontario Universities Biology Departments decided to pool resources in this area. The net outcome is that students can take Field Courses offered by other member institutions. This provides a tremendous array of choices that no one department would ever be able to offer. A list of the available courses is posted at http://www.oupfb.ca. For registration Guelph students would be registered in BIOL*4700, BIOL*4800 and/or BIOL*4900 Field Biology for two-week or longer courses which are worth 0.50 credit. Again, you must be pre-registered for the course before you leave, so please check and confirm. Students taking field courses outside of Canada must also take a pre-departure orientation session through the Centre for International Programs, called Depart Smart. More details and instructions can be found in the OUPFB Course Outline and frequently asked questions may be answered in the Instructions for Application to an OUPFB Field Course.