Give to Biological Sciences

Field schools - Experiential Learning

Research and Teaching Collections

The Department of Biological Sciences is a large and diverse academic research and teaching enterprise, boasting a rich history of specimen-based scientific study going back to the origins of the University of Alberta. Botanists, entomologists, ornithologists, mammalogists, malacologists, and palaeontologists have been conducting research at the University of Alberta for more than one hundred years. Their research has required them to collect and preserve the objects they study, and to store those objects in the department's research and teaching collections - in museums. The department now hosts nine internationally recognized collections, ranging from mosses and vascular plants, to shells and fossils, that combined, represent the largest museum collection housed within a single department, at the University of Alberta. Giving to the department's research and teaching collections supports ongoing and active research programs by numerous graduate students and professors, and more importantly, supports the day to day use of these collections as teaching tools in the undergraduate classroom in our "hands- on" labs.