21st Century Fish and Wildlife Curricula

Demands by employers for well-rounded individuals are increasing. Potential employers of fish and wildlife graduates are looking for staff that can communicate effectively, work autonomously, and who can problem-solve (Northwest Center Sustainable Resources 1998). There has been a paradigm shift in curriculum development driven by the requirements of agencies and intensified by an entirely different type of student. Historically, students in the natural resources have been characterized as introverts who are intensely vested in the science of their work with lesser attention paid to effective communication; however, the new generation of students, termed “Millenials”, is fundamentally different from previous ones in several key facets. These students present a challenge to natural resource departments because of their differences in sociability (McGlynn 2005), diversity (Broido 2004), and ethics (DeBard 2004). While the student population is veering away from norms of the past 50 years, academic changes are also impacting the ways in which students are taught (Aikenhead 2006). The increasingly specialized professoriat is a response to both workforce demands, and globalization (Gumport 1993; Fairweather 2002), but challenges academic programs by decreasing the number of instructors who can teach a broad range of topics to undergraduates. The question then becomes how can programs accommodate the demands of majors and graduate schools for increasing specialization in the curricula while still providing the well-rounded graduates sought by agencies, and maintaining quality instructor for non-majors? We suggest an updating of current fish and wildlife curricula to reflect these myriad demands, one that includes quantitative competency, communications skills, problem-solving, organizational management, ethics and philosophy, human elements, fundamental science studies, the language of science, and experiential learning