Course-based Opportunities

Our lab is looking to recruit BIOL 481 (Extended Research Project) students! We have an array of histology projects, including:

Wildfire smoke is becoming more prevalent during the summer and fall in Saskatchewan, but how this impacts songbirds and their ability to communicate is not well-investigated. The Ivy lab is looking for a motivated student who will analyze audio recordings of songbird calls before, during, and after wildfire smoke events, to assess whether there are changes in acoustic indices and the composition of songbird species calling. This project will allow you to gain skills in sound data management, AI classifiers, R coding, data visualization and interpretation, and written and oral communication. You do not need previous experience in any of the above skills to succeed in this project!

This project can only be conducted as a BIOL 481 project due to the amount of data analysis involved.

If you are interested, please contact Dr. Ivy at catherine.ivy@usask.ca and include a brief description of why you are interested in the project.

The Biology Department oversees the care of the Natural History Collection, which contains thousands of specimens collected decades (and up to a century) ago! Using specimens collected by Dr. Dick Neal, a reproductive biologist interested in African rodents, a motivated student will investigate how environment (ecological niche) influences the skull morphology of two different African rodent species collected from two different regions in Africa. The student will have the opportunity to sculpt the project to their question of interest, focusing on habitat, behaviour, diet, or the role of relatedness versus environment. This project will allow you to build skills in skull measurements, large data input, R analysis, and written and oral communication

This project can only be conducted as a BIOL 481 project due to the amount of data collection involved.

If you are interested, please contact Dr. Ivy at catherine.ivy@usask.ca and include a brief description of why you are interested in the project.

Prescribed fire is becoming a more common practice to maintain grassland ecosystem health.
Previous studies have shown that the use of prescribed fire is important for maintaining native
grassland species and that species diversity returns to pre-burn levels roughly five years after a
burn. However, how prescribed fire impacts other aspects of grassland ecosystems is not well
explored. This project will allow students to investigate the influence of prescribed fire on insect
diversity through insect identification and quantification. Samples were collected throughout the
summer of 2026, allowing for a comparison of species throughout the summer, in addition to
between control and prescribe fire sites. This project will allow students to build skills in insect
identification, large dataset generation, R analysis, and written and oral communication.

The magnitude of this project will depend on whether the student is looking to conduct
BIOL 380 or BIOL 480.

If you are interested, please contact Dr. Ivy at catherine.ivy@usask.ca and include a brief description of why you are interested in the project.

New projects are consistently evolving and we welcome students who are interested in conducting research in the museum zoological collections (feel free to bring along your ideas)!

Students are not required to come with an idea for a project, as our lab has projects for you to be involved with!

Although we are primarily searching for BIOL 481 students, students who are searching for a BIOL 380, BIOL 480, or BIOL 479 supervisor should still reach out if they're interested in being apart of the lab! (We'll see what projects we can make work for a one-semester research project!)

Forms and syllabuses for these courses can be found on the Department of Biology website:

Summer Research

Are you interested in doing summer research and getting paid? Two options exist for paid summer research in our department:

NSERC USRA: This is a highly competitve summer research award. You will work with me to create a project proposal that will be submitted to the university for ranking. Deadline for applications is typically late January!

Biology Undergraduate Summer Research Award (BUGS): This summer research award is applied for in April and provides Biology students with paid summer research experience. Students should contact supervisors to see if they have a position available, if a supervisor has a position available, then the supervisor will move forward with the application process. (Application forms are only provided to supervisors and not available on the department website.) 

Certificate in Biological Research

Our College offers a Certificate in Biological Research that you complete concurrently with your undergraduate degree! 

This certificate has requires numerous courses, including BIOL 481 or multiple other research-based courses!