Eagle Hill Natural History Science Training Programs
Week-long Seminars
Weekend Workshops
Online Seminars
Each summer since 1987, regional and national authorities in the field of natural history have come to the Eagle Hill Institute on the Eastern Maine Coast to lead intensive Week-long Seminars and Weekend Workshops in their specialties. Most of these in-person programs are offered for an advanced and professional audience, well-qualified undergraduate and graduate students, and amateur naturalists. Participants include independent scholars, university professors, amateur naturalists, professional field biologists and consultants, foresters, and teachers, as well as personnel from museums, botanical gardens, various federal and state agencies, and numerous environmental organizations.
In support of the in-person programs at Eagle Hill, the Institute started offering Online Seminars in 2020, as a creative adaptation to global concerns about the coronavirus.
Many of the programs offered by the Institute are rarely offered by other institutions. They represent an exceptional value in education because they are efficient and intensive in focus. This intensity is largely possible because instructors are leading authorities in their fields and because all participants are keenly interested in the subject of a given seminar. With a limited number of participants, instructors can individualize their instructional program. Participants have the opportunity to let instructors know ahead of time what their special interests are.
The programs offered at the home campus of the Institute are of special interest because they focus on the classical natural history of one of North America's most spectacular and pristine natural areas, the coast of eastern Maine from Acadia National Park to Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge and beyond. Many programs focus on a particular group of organisms or a particular habitat. Others present a broad conceptual overview of a subject. The programs usually meet each day from after breakfast through dinner and into the evening. They generally combine intensive field studies and follow-up work in the lab with lectures, discussions, and a review of the current literature. Meals are relaxed settings for informal discussions. Evenings are free for independent studies and/or slide presentations and follow-up discussions by the fireplace in the dining hall's comfortable lounge.
The Institute's Online-only Mini-seminars have broad geographic applicability that extends well beyond Maine.
Why do people participate in natural history science programs at the home campus of Eagle Hill?
They do so in order to ...
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expand their knowledge in a subject of special interest to them, with help from an expert. - keep up-to-date and exchange current ideas in a given field.
- establish new personal and professional contacts with colleagues.
- obtain an intensive introduction to a discipline that is related to their specialty.
- create new curriculum ideas for their teaching responsibilities.
- develop research ideas and meet potential research associates.
- gain new perspectives on the flora, fauna, and geology of an unfamiliar region.
- enhance familiarity with otherwise rare flora and fauna that are still found in the essentially pristine and largely undisturbed habitats of the two easternmost counties of the US.
- improve confidence in identifying difficult groups of organisms.
- meet with other professionals and explore career ideas.
- attend specialty programs that are not offered at their own institution.
- concentrate efficiently on a given subject while free from usual distractions.
- earn needed university credits, CEUs, or recertification units.
- help justify an extended field trip to Maine, New England, and maritime Canada.