Steve Brown, assistant supervisor of Building Repairs, spotted four fuzzy killdeer chicks scurrying around on wobbly legs recently in a hazardous habitat—a rooftop. Killdeer are medium-sized plovers that are known for nesting in unusual and potentially dangerous locations such as parking lots, rooftops, lawns, athletic fields and golf courses.
Stockton Biodiversity
Decoding campus nature
Author Archives: allens1
Matthew Widjaja Models Relationships Between Endangered and Invasive Species
Matthew Widjaja knew he wanted to study Computer Science, but he was equally passionate about Biology. While flipping through the pages of “Who’s Fred,” a Stockton College admissions pamphlet, he found a major that blended his two interests.
Stockton’s Computational Science program, which uses mathematics and computer technology to solve problems that arise in a variety of sciences, “combined the two perfectly, so I went for it. It just made sense,” said Widjaja, a Williamstown native.
Matthew Widjaja presented his research on the relationships between endangered and invasive specie at the Northeast Regional Honors Council Conference in Niagara Falls, New York in April. Photo: Lisa Rosner, Distinguished Professor of History
Melissa Laurino Gets a Head Start as a Marine Researcher While Helping Wildlife on Campus
“A dolphin’s dorsal fin is like a human fingerprint,” said Melissa Laurino, a junior Marine Biology major. “Every fin is unique.”
Laurino captured thousands of photographs of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins aboard a whale-watching vessel this summer to develop a catalogue of the dolphins found along the Cape May coastline. She tackled the project through an internship with the Cape May Whale Watch and Research Center.
Jillena Yeager to Study Wood Frogs on Stockton’s Campus This Winter
Most students flock to the Library with umbrellas in hand or stay in their dorm rooms on wet winter afternoons, but this semester, Jillena Yeager will head outdoors after each rainfall and twice daily to conduct her research.
The junior Environmental Science major is studying the campus’s wood frog population during the species’ breeding season in mid to late February. “The wood frog is one of the many amphibians that breed in temporary ponds where fish are absent. At Stockton, there are at least 22 of these temporary ponds, called vernal ponds,” she explained. A pond called ‘S’ is where she will focus her study.
Chris Borkowski Helps to Install Osprey Nesting Platform
This spring, when ospreys begin to migrate northward from South America, they will have a new nesting site located near the Stockton Seaview Hotel and Golf Club in Galloway. Chris Borkowski, a graduating Environmental Studies and Photography major at Stockton College, helped to build and install a nesting platform for our college mascot in Dr. Daniel Moscovici’s Environmental Issues capstone course.
After studying natural habitat loss, Moscovici gave his students a challenge. “I asked the students to choose a local species, identify where on campus it would live and to build its habitat,” said Moscovici, an assistant professor of Environmental Science and Geology.
Groups chose animals ranging from bats to bluebirds, but Borkowski, of North Cape May, and his teammates Keith Mulligan, of Tabernacle, and Kelsey Thomas, of Cherry Hill, chose a species with close connections to the college.
Ben Wurst, Dr. Daniel Moscovici, Chris Martin, and Chris Borkowski make
their way through the saltmarsh to install an osprey nesting platform. Photo by Mike Horan.