EARTHQUEST (Canada) for the Environment
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In order to qualify for internships and other job opportunities through the Biological Field School and become full time students must enroll in a minimum of 3 courses. This will allow an instructor to work with you to improve your resume, cover letter, provide job finding strategies. It also places you on the list to receive weekly job postings so that you may start applying to suitable jobs immediately. Please choose from the following list of courses. If you wish to discuss courses with an instructor please contact email us;
Reasons/Rationale for taking my field botany courses
All of my vascular plant field identification courses go well beyond any college/university level courses and meet or surpass expectations of employers in the environmental industry. I am aware of the curriculum offered at some of the top colleges/universities in Canada and how in depth they go into their plant courses. I have also had numerous grads from these institutions come to me after graduating (as well as environmental consultants) to take my courses and all agree that they learn how to field identify to vascular plant family, genus and species much quicker and more accurately than they did from any college/university courses. As a result, employers are sending me their staff to gain intensive hands-on practical field skills in a short period of time (over a couple of days). Moreover, I integrate the OWES and ELC methodology into my plant courses in such a way that you learn where to look for plants (eg. Species at Risk - SARs), how to look - based on visual characteristics exhibited by the plants (what you see is what you get), and when to look - based on seasonality, habitat, ecosite, soils, hydrology, geology and distribution (the key parameters of the OWES and ELC methodology). Additionally, I focus more on what the college/university courses miss - herbaceous vascular plants found in the herb and ground layers (ie. wildflowers, some grasses, sedges and rushes if taking the Level 1 FBT terrestrial plant courses, some ferns and club mosses). My Level 1 & 2 terrestrial plant courses cover vascular plants of the 5 forest regions of Ontario and build a strong working knowledge of the plants of these ecozones. This means that I will develop your visual/practical field skills so that you won't need to rely on reference/resource materials such as field guides to field identify your plants. Trees and shrubs are also covered in my Level 1 and 2 terrestrial plant courses. The Level 3 courses are more specialized - focusing almost exclusively on species level field identification techniques (ie. hairy vs. non-hairy stem, pinnately vs. palmately veined, coarsely toothed vs. doubly serrated leaf margins, etc.). The Level 3 courses also go into hybrids and sub-species level field diagnostics, which is not taught in any field botany courses, that I'm aware of, anywhere. I would strongly recommend taking my plant courses to compliment any OWES or ELC courses because field botany is not emphasized when taking these courses, yet field botany is a major component of accurately and correctly delineating polygons or wetlands and classifying ecosites. I have found that people who don't know their plants well enough make numerous technical errors while performing OWES or ELC methodology. If you need to talk to some grads from my plants courses you may contact me. The following field botany courses are offered during the 2012 field season;
For a complete description of the core International FBT Program courses, specialty and correspondence courses please download
International FBT Program Courses
$27.50 CAD + shipping and handling 
Photo: Dave Jolly for more information please click on;
D. Jolly, B.Sc.
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