Outreach & Education

The McGill-STRI Neotropical Environment Option
Dr. Brian Leung, chair of PRISM, also serves as the director of McGill’s Neotropical Environment Option (NEO) program.

The NEO program is a research-based option for Masters and PhD students, offered in collaboration by McGill University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). It is a program aimed at students who wish to focus their graduate research on environmental issues relevant to the Neotropics and Latin American countries. As such, students’ research is completed in Latin America, and NEO’s core and complementary courses are taught in Panama. Students are co-supervised by faculty from McGill and an institution from their focal country, and spend time working in both places, fostering cross-institutional collaborations and diverse partnerships.

NEO’s educational framework is focused on interdisciplinary approaches to research and welcomes students from a wide range of disciplines, including students in the departments of Anthropology, Biology, Bioresource Engineering, Geography, Natural Resource Sciences, Plant Science, and Political Science. The courses offered by NEO are also highly multidisciplinary, combining natural and social sciences, to give students better contextualization of the challenges faced by Panama, and other areas in the Global South.

The central aim of the NEO program is facilitate a broader understanding of tropical environmental issues and the development of skills relevant to working in the tropics. Click here if you'd like to learn more about NEO.

About NEO Courses
NEO courses are offered in Panama. The program is keen on implicating both local Latin American students and McGill students in the courses, as the interaction has proven enriching for both. As such, NEO acquired funding from the Islas Secas Foundation to enable Panamanian and other Latin American students to take the NEO courses through STRI.

NEO has two core courses, “Foundations of Environmental Policy” (ENVR 610) and “Neotropical Biology, Environment, and Conservation” (BIOL 640). These courses were “rebooted” and reimagined in 2022 by Professor Brian Leung and his colleagues at McGill and STRI. They implemented a more ambitious, integrative approach between the natural and social sciences. Students can now travel throughout Panama, experiencing diverse local social contexts (e.g., farmers and Indigenous groups) and ecosystems (e.g., forests and marine coral reefs), to gain a better understanding of the issues with research and conservation in the neotropics.

If you'd like to learn more about these courses, read this McGill Bieler School of Environment Newsletter!

Words from NEO students: