This Class is a Zoo!

Anthropology courses (ANTH 402/502 and 403/503) are featured on the front page of Montclair Magazine, featuring our innovative teaching and engaged community coursework at the Turtle Back Zoo. An excerpt of the story is below.

Some students sit on the ground, others lean against posts or stand as they discuss primates with the professor, who crouches in front of the group, so as not to obstruct the view of the gibbons swinging on ropes behind her. One gibbon hangs from a vine, staring at the students and making faces as though they are the ones on exhibit. Another quietly grooms herself on a ledge, ignoring the rambunctiousness of the others. Welcome to class at the zoo, officially Primate Behavior and Ecology, and Methods in Primatology.

Offered for the first time this spring, the combined undergraduate and graduate course met all day every Thursday at the Essex County Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange. The six-credit course, which started in the bitter cold of January, took place outdoors no matter the weather. Through a partnership with the zoo, 18 graduate and undergraduate students mostly studied primates – gibbons, tamarins, galagos – but also conducted observational research on other species including sea lions, otters, wolves, manta rays, toco toucans, a cheetah, a snow leopard and a red panda.

“These students aren’t just learning how to be scientists, they are scientists in this class, and I couldn’t feel better about the future knowing it’s in their hands,” says Assistant Anthropology Professor Cortni Borgerson.

Read more of this story in the newest edition of the Montclair Magazine.