Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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Your Introduction to the Course

Welcome to the educational unit (or "course" with the catchy title of Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management. or "Modern Wildlife Management" (NR 5984, Modern Wildlife Management, CRN 16551)For reading ease be sure to adjust to a full-size screen and increase text size as needed using the "view" option at the top of the screen. (You'll learn why the title is important as you progress through the course.). Let's call the course the Faunal System course. The course is offered in a collaborative project of Virginia Tech and the US Forest Service. I'm glad that you're visiting this site and I'll do whatever I can to make our time together useful, pleasant, and efficient for you.

Instructors

The course is taught by Dr. David Trauger, Dr. Gary Evans, and behind the scenes, Dr. Bob Giles. Links are available here to information about each of them.

This is an educational unit that provides the equivalent to a one-semester, senior-level university course or graduate-refresher course. You may want to get to Giles' CD of essays called Peculiar Manor to complete some class assignments (see the address in the box below).You need to contact Dr. Dave Trauger the instructor, for information about admission requirements, fees, and course related matters. Please email suggestions for editorial changes and ways the course may be improved to Bob Giles, Dr. Trauger or Dr. Evans .

The Course Contents

The Course Syllabus

Introduction to the Course

A Suggestion Box is available for you to offer suggestions (editorial, major changes, additions, and linkages)

In general, the course is about information, ideas, and behaviors that I wish I had when I started a career and that I expect you to carry forward into improved wildlife resource system management... and of course, related rural resource management.

Who?

The course is for:

• working wild animal resource managers, many distant from teaching centers, many with major time constraints and family responsibilities
• natural resource specialists who want to learn how to talk wildlife
• people who have been out of school a few years and want a review or an alternative or addition to their past course work, and
• people interested in or preparing for a career move
• and I hope others with natural resource and wildland resource-related curiosity will find things within it of interest and challenging
• people looking for a new ways to look at the world, solve problems, and improved rural-based decision making.

I hope you will find the site useful, stimulating, and that it might result -- through you -- in major improvements in the way the wild animal resource systems of the world (or even your backyard) are managed.

Your Action ?

The opportunity that the course provides for you is to read, study, and reflect at your own pace. You complete assignments; I evaluate and comment on them. When you have completed all assignments you may take the exam within a brief period before a scheduled date (no "incomplete" grade is awarded on any course).You make local arrangements to have it supervised by a reputable person or persons outside of your family and close friends and get my approval. Your grade will be made available to you soon thereafter (and if very high and with your permission will be posted at this web site).

I'd like to learn a little about you so that I can send email that may be useful and responsive in special ways to your personal conditions, needs, and questions. I'm trying to become "customer/student obsessed." Do not hesitate to write in the space below. I read it all and enjoy hearing from people. My replies may be short, but they may be frequent until you get the ones that you need. Enter your name and email address. (There is more space than is shown in the box. The words "wrap around.") Comments on your past resource-related experience and/or reasons for working within "the Faunal System course") will be welcomed. Just e-mail me [RHGiles] [at symbol] RuralSystem [dot] com.

You may see a small expression of my gratitude to others for help in offering this course to you.

There is a person at the other end of this thing.

You'll be corresponding with Dr. Trauger via email and in more conventional ways. We'll have more direct, almost personal, contact than in the average conventional class. Giles comment:Check out my curriculum vitae and ask around. I'll welcome a visit here in Blacksburg or opportunity to meet personally some day.

The Contents

The course is designed to work for students out of Assignments. The Contents lists all of the materials within Assignments and a few more. From either file, you may double click and link to most parts of the course.

Assignments

     Assignments are listed. Here's the first activity and assignment:

1. Read the Preface. (For newcomers to computer use, click twice on the underlined word to be shown that file.) Answer for yourself, (usually by writing in your personal notebook for the course) the questions there. I'm not checking ... just do it.
2. Read the Introduction to the Course, Student Orientation, and A Letter to Students containing comments about the history of the course and about distance-learning concepts. Complete Assignment 1 listed at the end of the Letter to Students.

After you read the Preface to this "hypermedium thing," take a look at the Contents.

Most students work through the Assignments. Some start at the top of The Contents page and work on down, linking to other units. There are a few more units provided that are not included within the Assignments. There may be a few duplicate spots. Just review it quickly to pump-up your learning curve, then progress. Consider studying course material with another person. Strike up email correspondence with your classmates. Questions about tests, quizzes, or the final exam?

This Unit seeks to honor Mr. M. Leon Powell, October 26, 1913 - July 21, 2003, retired US Forest Service general district assistant, of Covington, Virginia. Expert forester, woodsman, angler, trapper, inventor, provocateur, wise counselor, World War II veteran, and former member of The Wildlife Society. He taught US Forest Service rangers and State wildlife biologists with good humor. He cared for the land and waters through it all.

Now proceed directly to the Assignments or to the Contents (you may want to bookmark it or add it to "favorites.")

Go to the top.

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Send an email message - Questions, revisions?
Revisions January 14, 2004, January, 2007; March, 2008