ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the university community has responded to the challenge of training college undergraduate and graduate students in conservation biology. It discusses efforts underway within the Cooperative Extension System to educate a broader public about the conservation of biological resources. Cooperative Extension faces additional challenges, including redefining the audience for its educational efforts and keeping its staff abreast of developments in conservation biology research. Both university and outreach educators will need to seek new funding sources for the nontraditional programs. Conservation biology is changing the ways both university and outreach education are conducted. The conservation of land and biological resources in the United States has traditionally been entrusted to several applied resource management professions and their respective academic disciplines—forestry, fisheries, wildlife, and range. Most of the responding schools had active conservation biology teaching programs. There are several funding opportunities promoting interdisciplinary approaches to training conservation biology graduate students.
