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We're at Mountain Lake Biological
Station, University of Virginia's

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residential field station. We're sitting
at about 4,000 feet at the top of Salt

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Pond Mountain. I teach at UVA during the
academic year and as soon as classes are

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out in the spring, I come up here and I
facilitate the classes and research here.

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I get to basically run a summer camp for
bio geeks,

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where I get to convince people to come
up, play in the woods learn about plants,

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animals, organisms and learn how to
critically think and become researchers

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in their own right. The students who get
to take those classes are really out in

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the field with a faculty member, eight,
nine hours a day for three or four weeks.

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Students can get their hands dirty and
learn about organisms in their natural habitats.

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The primary work that I do up
here is looking at social network evolution.

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What we're trying to do is
understand how social connections drive evolution.

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We use this beetle called the
forked fungus beetle to test ideas about social networks .

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So if you come out at
night, what you'll find on one of these

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brackets is basically like the night
club, it's the place where all the

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happenin' activity goes on.
I get to come and spend hours in the

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woods asking interesting questions about
animals and behavior and trying to

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puzzle out how evolution works.

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The concept
of an Academical village is that

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intellectuals, teachers, students work and
play together. And we really live that

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motto here. Every student that works in
my lab came to my lab because they were

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up here, it is a place where you cannot
escape that connection of individual

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interaction that really inspires
students to get involved in the research

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at a core level.