This option is available within the Botany major at the following location:

• Corvallis

The option in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation (EEC) combines 4 required advanced BOT undergraduate courses in aspects of ecology, environmental plant physiology, and plant diversity, with electives drawn from a list of BOT, BI, FES and FW courses covering population dynamics, symbiosis, restoration, and conservation.

Option Code: 934

Upon successful completion of the program, students will meet the following learning outcomes:

• Communicate scientific concepts, experimental results and analytical arguments clearly and concisely verbally and in writing.
• Apply scientific methods, reasoning and appropriate mathematics to describe, explain and understand biological systems.
• Demonstrate understanding of five core concepts in biology: evolution; pathways and transformations of energy and matter; information flow, exchange, and storage; structure and function; and biological systems.
• Use interdisciplinary approaches (applying chemistry and quantitative skills) to work on biological problems.
• Describe the complex networks of interactions that determine energy flow and the cycling of water, carbon, nitrogen, and minerals within ecosystems.
• Identify and analyze the anatomical and morphological features of plants and plant structures as they enable plant function and reveal plant evolutionary histories. 
• Recognize and describe the features of vascular plant groups using standard botanical terminology. Interpret the evolutionary and phylogenetic relationships of plants by evaluating analytical and experimental tools used to understand organismal diversity. 
• Incorporate information from physiology, genetics, developmental biology, biochemistry and genomics to explain how plants integrate water-relations, mineral and organic nutrition, solute transport, respiration and photosynthesis, hormonal and environmental signals to regulate the processes of growth and reproduction.
• Describe and implement laboratory methods typically used in plant biology.

The total requirements of the Botany Core are shown in the Catalog. The BOT core includes courses in ecology, physiology, evolution, systematics, statistics, and genetics that form the general background in this area of botany. Outside of the core courses, the option required courses include advanced physiology and ecology courses, a WIC course (BOT 323 or BI 371) can be used for both WIC and option requirements, and a choice of plant diversity courses. The electives offer the student a broad range of theoretical, applied, molecular, and quantitative courses. 

To encourage students in the option to learn actively and obtain practical skills, up to 3 credits of approved Experiential Learning can be applied to the option. The EEC option courses are all approved electives within the BOT major. The core course requirements of the BOT major are not changed by doing the option, and no additional course credits are required to complete it.

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Baccalaureate Core Course (BCC)

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Writing Intensive Course (WIC)

Option Code: 934