Ecosystem Laboratory

A foundation of your experience is exploring and learning our 1,189-acre preserve that contains wetlands, bogs, lakeshores, upland and lowland forests, prairies, and meadows. Merry Lea is among the best-assembled land preserves in Indiana and the largest private preserve in the state. The area contains a diverse group of Indiana ecosystems that have been managed to provide both rare and typical Midwestern habitat.

Environmental education ranges from multi-day outdoor adventures to residential church camps, zoo programming, or in-the-classroom lessons. Because of the nature preserve, a distinctive aspect of our place-based program is an immersion in natural history. Our approach depends on knowing and understanding systems thinking, learning the local ecosystem and then building lessons from that knowledge. In a research methods course you will learn how to collect information on ecosystems and translate that information to the public. In order to fully understand how one site (i.e. one educational resource) changes across seasons, each student will study an ecosystem throughout the year.