Uppsala-Groningen-Munich Week on Human Evolution

From EESwiki

The universities of Groningen, Uppsala and Munich are very strong in the fields of evolution and ecology. The three universities have international master programs in these fields and plan a far-reaching collaboration. We intend to start a joint master program in 2010. For this we are preparing an Erasmus Mundus application. The advantages of a joint program are (among others): mobility for students and staff, visibility of our programs and departments, and scholarships for our students.

To get the collaboration started and to let our current students profit from the ties between the universities, in December 2008 we offered a week of joint teaching for all first semester master students from Groningen, Uppsala and Munich. The one-week course was integrated in the running master programs and was compulsory for all students. In future the location will rotate yearly among Uppsala, Groningen, and Munich.

The topic of the joint week was human evolution. This topic was chosen because it is of interest to many of our students, yet none of the programs offers a course on this topic in the first year. The idea was to use recent genomics information from humans, chimps and Neanderthal to address questions in phylogenetics, phylogeography, speciation, ecology, and disease detection. Students worked in small groups on of a list of selected subjects. We had daily discussions/lectures, and on the last day, the students presented their work.

During the week, the three universities also presented the research possibilities they offer for students and we hope that some of our students were inspired and will decide to do a course or a research project at one of the other universities or students from Uppsala and Groningen will come to Munich.