The Research Opportunity Program (ROP) gives students in Biology real lab experience under the supervision of Biology Faculty while earning academic credit. Research Opportunities are available in all academic terms.
For more information about the Research Opportunity Program please visit: http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/rop/
Biology students are also invited to present their ROP work at a poster session in early April. Prizes are awarded for the best posters.
The 2024 UTM Biology Poster Day was April 10, 2024. The 2025 dates will be announced shortly.
Past ROP Projects:
All the images and sounds were taken and recorded by ROP students at UTM or at Erindale and Riverwood parks.
- 2018: Nasif Iqbal, Alexandra Merianos, and Samreen Munim
- 2017: Margaux Gaerlan, Shakil Islam, Nadine Le, and Clyde Yen
- Prof. Sanja Hinic-Frlog and Prof. Steven Chatfield
The University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) is located alongside the Credit river surrounded by various habitats with a diversity of wildlife on campus. Specifically, the forest around UTM is home to many local and migratory birds. This is an exciting, unique and educational resource for students, staff, and faculty on campus. The object of this project is to develop an educational ornithology trail around the UTM campus, wherein users of the trail can access online educational resources by their smartphones. To this end, we have collected multimedia resources, generated interactive educational materials, and collected data about bird abundance at UTM, all of which will be used to create online ornithology content.
The project now has 70 still images, 40 audio recordings, and 20 videos. We have also developed 50 educational summaries and questions about birds at UTM. We have also collected point count data, which will be part of an ongoing project to observe and record avian population trends at UTM.
This data, combined with data from previous years, is being used to further develop educational resources for students and the public. These resources will be used to create content that can be accessed online by users of the UTM Ornithology Trail website. The online content will include informational texts, ID guides, video (of birds and bird song/call sound waves), recorded songs/calls, and still images. The website will also include interactive educational activities to engage student and the public to better understand avian biology.
The online web-based content will be assessable to trail users and ornithologists currently unable to use the trail because of accessibility issues. Trail users will be able to access online information through QR code labels positioned at key points along the UTM Ornithology Trail. The UTM Ornithology Trail is the first of a number of planned education trails, which will include plants and ecology, animal behaviour and acoustics. The content and online development of the ornithology trail are serving as a model for the development of the others at UTM.