By: ISU Communications and Marketing Staff August 26, 2008
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - For two weeks this summer local
teachers got a closer view of the wild side of democracy in
action through Indiana State University and Yellowstone National
Park. John Conant, ISU economics department chair, and Charles
Amlaner, ISU biology professor, developed the class after
attending a meeting with the American Democracy Project and the
American Association of State Colleges and Universities in which
the groups called for universities to involve others in
democracy. "We invited a bunch of schoolteachers to come into
this program in order to learn a little bit about the issues in
Yellowstone," Amlaner said. "Our hope was, basically, to
influence not only the teachers in the various important aspects
of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, but at the same time,
those teachers would go back into their classrooms and then
influence a number of young people, both in the middle schools
and high schools of Vigo County and surroun