The documentary film “Experiencing the Everglades”, produced as an interdisciplinary venture by SUNY Broome’s Communications and Biology Departments, is now available to the campus community on-line during the Covid-19 crisis.
The film documents the experiences of our Biology Department’s legendary BIO-200 Course “Ecology of the Everglades”, which takes students to South Florida each January for two weeks of on-location exploration and study in Everglades National Park in southern Florida.
In the January 2016 course two Communications Department filmmaking students, Nick Venuti and A.J. Bush, embedded in the course to document the adventures and experiences of the two dozen Biology students enrolled in the course.
Shorter versions of the documentary have been used by the Biology Department and the Communications Department to showcase student work.
One of the unique elements of the project is the interdisciplinary nature of having Communication students capture and document the field work of the Biology students. Another advantage of this project, both for the Biology Department and SUNY Broome, is to showcase through the film the unique educational opportunity students have been experiencing in the five decades the BIO-200 course has been offered through our Biology Department.
This 22-minute version of “Experiencing the Everglades” was completed in 2019, and was aired locally on WSKG Public Television on January 1st, 2020 as the national PBS network began running a multi-part series “Battleground Everglades”, which focuses on the various environmental challenges facing one of America’s most biologically diverse national parks.
-Ed Evans, Communications Instructor
Check out “Experiencing the Everglades“ on youtube!
