Course Format

At Wellesley College (Spring 2007):

Weekly class meetings at Wellesley College during spring semester will prepare students for the summer field experience. The class will meet once a week for 2 hours for lectures and class discussions. These lectures and discussions will focus on the principles of limnology (study of inland waters) as they pertain to Lake Baikal and on the role of the lake in Russian literature, music, art and the country's environmental movement.

At Lake Baikal (August 2007):

The 3-week field experience will take place primarily at Lake Baikal during August, and it will consist of testing student-generated hypotheses, meeting and interviewing the lake's stakeholders (e.g., fisherman, ecotourism leader, pulp-mill spokesperson, environmental advocate, and aquatic scientists), touring various sites (e.g., Limnological Institute in Irkutsk, the Baikalsk pulp mill, local nature reserve), discussing papers pertinent to Baikal, and keeping a daily field journal.

Dr. Liubov' Izmest'eva is our liaison in Russia, and she has made arrangements for us to work and live at a biological field station on the southwestern shore of Lake Baikal in the village of Bol'shie Koty. This field station is owned and managed by the Biological Research Institute (BRI) of Irkutsk State University.

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