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BioU offers in-depth nature study taught by the region’s finest experts and educators. Our students are weekend naturalists, working ecologists, and anyone with an insatiable drive to understand the pieces and patterns of our wild world.

You won’t find admissions committees, dean’s offices, or football teams here. At BioU, our star athletes swing insect nets. Our mascots are Arethusa orchids, Promethea silkmoths, and an orange slime of uncertain biological origins. Our campus comprises Vermont’s diverse wildlands, headquartered at the lab and classrooms of Montpelier’s North Branch Nature Center.

Spend a weekend or a week this summer immersed outdoors in a learning community of like-minded nature lovers.

General Information

**2020 Course Offerings Announced January 1st**

2019 Summer Field Course Offerings

Early Season Sedges of the Northern Forest: A Field Introduction

Jerry Jenkins and Brett Engstrom
June 1-2 | $295

Nature Drawing and Journaling in the Field

Nona Estrin and Adelaide Tyrol
June 8-9 | $295
  

A Closer Look at Bryophytes: Mosses, Liverworts and Sphagnum

Mark Rahill
June 8-9 | $295

Vermont’s Rare, Threatened, and Endangered Birds

Allan Strong
June 15-16 | $295

Mushrooms: Field Identification and Fungal Ecology

Dave Muska
June 15-16 | $295

Peatlands: Botany, Hydrology and Ecology of Vermont’s Bogs and Fens

Liz Thompson and Eric Sorensen
June 22-23 | $295

Geology of Northern Vermont

Stephen Wright
June 22-23 | $295
 

Caterpillars of New England: The Whole Story

Samuel Jaffe
June 29 | $125

Moths and Butterflies: Identification, Taxonomy and Specimen Preparation

Hugh McGuinness  and Bryan Pfeiffer
June 29 - July 3 | $525

About Biodiversity University

Biodiversity University satisfies a strong demand among adults for in-depth, immersive nature study. This university has no sports team, no admission’s office, and no deans or provosts. Instead, BioU has Vermont’s rich and varied assemblage of natural communities – wild places well-suited to intensive field study and creative learning – and a community of passionate and renowned instructors.

We recruit some of North America’s most skilled and enthusiastic biologist educators to lead field-based seminars across a range of disciplines rarely found at academic institutions. Course topics include botany, ornithology, entomology, meteorology, photography, illustration, writing and other creative and scientific endeavors. BioU offers insights into the forces of nature: the harmony and diversity in groups of organisms, the simple and complex interactions between the biological and the physical, and the skills for identifying life in the natural world.

North Branch Nature Center

713 Elm Street
Montpelier, Vermont 05602
(802) 229-6206

Hours: Center Open Monday-Friday 9-4
Trails Open 24/7