Saturdaze

This is a GREAT opportunity for CCS Biology students. Check out last year's winners - Caitlin is a CCS Bio student.

The 15 June deadline for applying for the Saturdaze NatureJournal scholarship for research in natural history is fast approaching . This scholarship has been established with the cooperation of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. I would appreciate it if you would notify your contacts and your students of this award. This scholarship is not widely advertised, so generates a small applicant pool. Please encourage undergraduates currently involved in natural history research to apply.

The application form is online and is extremely simple to complete. Thanks.

Larry Friesen, PhD
Director, Saturdaze / NatureJournal
http://www.sbnature.net

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Scholarship amount: $2,000 and $500 annual awards

Application deadline: 15 June

Award date: 15 July

Application website: http://www.sbnature.net/scholarship/index.htm

Use of scholarship award : unrestricted

Scope of Saturdaze NatureJournal Scholarships: Awarded to undergraduates involved in research in natural history and majoring in a biological sciences major. Research area must be within one or more of the following geographic areas: San Luis Obispo County, Santa Barbara County, and/or northern Channel Islands or conducted by a student from one of the institutions listed below.

Applicant field: Applicant must have been an undergraduate student during the last year at one of the colleges or universities within San Luis Obispo or Santa Barbara Counties: Santa Barbara City College, Cuesta College, Allan Hancock, University of California Santa Barbara, Westmont College, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

>From the Saturdaze NatureJournal website . . .

Natural History is the broadest study of science and attempts to tie together observations of the natural world into a single interwoven fabric. As such, the knowledge base of natural history has grown beyond a single category of study and has been divided into smaller and smaller and more and more isolated disciplines. It is not uncommon that professional biologists study a single organism in a laboratory, far removed from its natural habitat. The Saturdaze Scholarship for Natural History Research supports the broader view.

Natural History is accessible to all who love and enjoy observing nature. In his essay on the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, as a naturalist, wrote that . . .

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us."

Who among us has not contemplated nature and been inspired to learn about the connectedness within diversity? In this sense, natural history has attracted not only the scientist, but the artist and poet; natural history has become the romantic science. The romance of natural history stems from our desire to relate to the natural world, to regain a connectedness to it, and to preserve its diversity.

Saturdaze has partnered with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and has funded a scholarship to encourage research that helps to explain one or another "entangled bank". The Saturdaze NatureJournal Scholarship for Natural History Research rewards exceptional students attempting to discover interactions in nature. Saturdaze and the Museum share the goal of "inspiring a passion for the natural world".