Each student will participate in one or more of the following five tasks that comprise a floristic study. All students will receive basic instruction in all tasks before choosing tasks.
- Collection
- Skills needed: Physical fitness (good hiking shoes a must), comfort with natural environments, ability to spot new and different plants, ability to orient spatially ("know where you are").
- Benefits: Exposure to many species of plants in the field, fresh air, exercise, possible animal sightings.
- Responsibilities: Collect all species in the study area that are in flower during the quarter, press and dry specimens, gather adequate collection information
- Basis for evaluation: Completeness of collection, adequacy of specimen preparation, completeness and accuracy of field data.
- Identification
- Skills needed: Strong analytical skills, ability to manipulate flowers under a microscope, attention to detail.
- Benefits: Solid foundation in plant identification, clear understanding of floral morphology (both skills will help with the key quizzes).
- Responsibilities: Identify plants collected during the quarter and plants from previous quarters.
- Basis for evaluation: Accuracy of identification.
- Data entry and label preparation
- Skills needed: Familiarity with computer data entry, attention to detail, ability to maintain consistency
- Benefits: Experience with museum bioinformatics (looks good on a résumé).
- Responsibilities: Collate data from collectors and identifiers and enter in a computer database, prepare labels for specimens
- Basis for evaluation: Accuracy of collation and data entry, appearance of labels.
- Specimen mounting
- Skills needed: Artistic sense, ability to do repetitive work carefully.
- Benefits: Exposure to many species of plants, marketable skill for summer internships.
- Responsibilities: Mount unmounted specimens from previous quarters, and if time permits, from the current quarter.
- Basis for evaluation: Appearance and sturdiness of mounted specimens.
- Specimen sorting and curation
- Skills needed: Strong organizational skills.
- Benefits: Best overview of the Cal Poly flora, solid skills for museum jobs.
- Responsibilities: Sort mounted specimens into cases by family, genus, and species, sort unmounted specimens as directed, assess for specimens needing repair, deal with insect pests.
- Basis for evaluation: Completeness and accuracy of arrangement, adequate disposition of damaged specimens.
All students will be expected to submit a draft rewrite of their respective job descriptions for use in future quarters.
