Experiential Education: INTO THE WILD

Mentorship, discovery and hands-on learning in Biology’s innovative courses

The morning sun filters through the towering trees of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, casting scattered light on a group of Villanova students making their way through the thick forest. With cameras and notebooks in hand, they marvel at the spongy, peat-covered ground beneath their boots—or bare feet—and the insect-eating plants that thrive in this nutrient-poor environment. A few students pluck tart cranberries straight from the bush, while others crouch to examine a sundew curling its sticky tendrils around an unsuspecting insect.

“I think it is essential for students to get outside and interact with nature,” says Vik Iyengar, PhD, professor of Biology. “It’s easy to learn about ecology and nod your head during lectures, but it’s a different thing entirely to walk barefoot through a bog, witness cattle egrets fishing, hold a praying mantis and get your hands dirty planting seeds.”

Dr. Iyengar instructs the innovative Evolutionary Ecology course where students spend over a third of their labs outdoors, with fieldwork on sites ranging from Villanova’s West Campus to the salt marshes of New Jersey’s coastline. The class also incorporates greenhouse experiments, allowing students to design and conduct multi-week research projects involving planting and harvesting crops. Dr. Iyengar’s own research on insect behavior heavily influences his teaching.

“In addition to studying pollinator behavior on West Campus, we do a mark-recapture study on praying mantises,” he shares. “This field experience provides me with an opportunity to talk about the role of these predators on pest management, as well as discuss some of their more interesting reproductive behaviors such as sexual cannibalism.”

It’s a passion he shares with Carter Young ’25 CLAS, whose love for biology began long before he arrived at Villanova. Growing up, Carter could be found exploring the environment around him, going on hikes and turning over logs to examine creatures and plants that fascinated him. He took every opportunity to learn beyond what his high school AP Biology class could offer, and when he arrived at Villanova, he was eager to take his intellectual curiosity to the next level.

During his first year as a Biology major, Carter enrolled in Dr. Iyengar’s Entomology course, where he quickly distinguished himself as a leader. “Carter was my de facto teaching assistant for the class,” says Dr. Iyengar. “He actually knew more about specific local species than I did.”

Since then, Carter has spent his undergraduate years immersed in ecological studies, seeking faculty-mentored research experiences with Dr. Iyengar and collaborating with faculty across disciplines. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences provided him with a range of hands-on experiences to take part in, from participating in the annual BioBlitz where students and faculty try to find as many species as possible in a few hours around Villanova’s campus, to conducting his senior thesis research in the Pacific Northwest, and exploring the wildlife of Costa Rica through the Tropical Ecology course with Robert Curry, PhD.

For Carter, fieldwork has been a defining aspect of his Villanova education. “I think the most important advantage is it teaches you that failure is something that is very common and something that you shouldn't be discouraged by,” he says. “Fieldwork is totally open ended. You can go out there and get absolutely nothing, and there are so many steps along the way that you must trial and error. And that's a really important experience to have.”

Dr. Iyengar’s Evolutionary Ecology class is designed to instill this sense of discovery—a central characteristic of the CLAS experience. He encourages all students, no matter their specific disciplines, to immerse themselves in their own surroundings.

“Ecology is the study of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment,” says Dr. Iyengar. “There is no better way to understand our place in nature than to get outside and experience it first-hand."