Vikki L Rodgers

• Ph.D., Forest Ecology
• Professor (Full) & Director of Natural Sciences at Babson College

The invasive plant Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard) has spread throughout forest understory and edge communities in much of North America, but its persistence, density, and impacts have varied across sites and time. Surveying the literature since 2008, we evaluated both previously proposed and new mechanisms for garlic mustard's invasion success...

Theories of plant invasions predict that plant communities should be more easily invaded when resources increase and/or competition decreases. We tested this with an experimentally introduced plant population by manipulating precipitation and resident community biomass. We used a spatially explicit demographic approach to develop a new population‐l...

Predicting the effects of climate change on tree species and communities is critical for understanding the future state of our forested ecosystems. We used a fully factorial precipitation (3 levels; ambient, -50% ambient, +50% ambient) by warming (4 levels; up to +4°C) experiment in an old-field ecosystem in the northeastern United States to study...

The biological responses to precipitation within the terrestrial components of Earth system models (ESMs), or land surface models (LSMs), are mechanistically simple and poorly constrained, leaving projections of terrestrial ecosystem functioning and feedbacks to climate change uncertain. A number of field experiments have been conducted or are unde...

The invasion of non-native plants can alter the diversity and activity of soil microorganisms and nutrient cycling within forests. We used field studies to analyze the impact of a successful invasive groundcover, Alliaria petiolata, on fungal diversity, soil nutrient availability, and pH in five northeastern US forests. We also used laboratory and...

Integrating the social sciences into an undergraduate urban ecology course helps students gain interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to address critical sustainability challenges. We therefore designed a co-taught social-ecological systems course that combines different disciplines to engage students in our main goals of fostering personal connect...

Educating more students about ecology and its beneficial applications to societal issues is urgent yet challenging. To address this challenge, diversifying ecology education is a key way to make ecology more inclusive, accessible, and interdisciplinary for more people than ever. Advancing this goal requires ecology educators to develop a more expan...

Originally developed for application to ecology courses for undergraduate majors, the Four‐Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) Framework offers possibilities for adaptation to courses with ecology content for many other audiences. Recognizing the extraordinary range of classroom contexts and constraints, we developed some general, flexible recomme...

Private companies seeking to heighten their social responsibility and reduce ecological impacts often lack practical approaches to discern high‐impact and cost‐effective changes. Deeper understanding of the interrelated economic, social, and ecological systems reflected in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) can enhance their...

In growing recognition that the business community must play a key role in the global issues encapsulated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Babson College, which has a business-focused curriculum, has striven first to reinvent its teaching of ethics and then, particularly over the past decade, to enhance its focus on sustainabili...

Multisite, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN) were assessed for impacts on student learning of collaborative science skills using a survey that could serve as a starting point for a validated assessment instrument for multisite CUREs. Pretests/posttests were administered ac...

In this chapter, we introduce a systems approach to transformational RMLE that considers multiple stakeholders as it emphasizes student learning, faculty and staff engagement, and the business school’s operations. We begin by identifying lessons and insights that can be drawn from universities that have taken an incremental approach to responsible...

Both students and industry are demanding that marketing instructors incorporate discussions of environmental and social responsibility into their courses. Marketing educators play a critical role in developing the knowledge and skills students need to effectively integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) into their future business endeavors....

Engaging students not majoring in science, sustainability or environmental studies in learning environmental literacy and shifting their attitudes and behavior toward nature often requires a multi-perspective approach and presents unique challenges. We sought to: (1) pair artistic perspectives with botanical concepts to educate and interest our stu...

When colleges commit to responsible management education (RME), they begin a journey of integrating a potentially transformative pedagogy into an established academic culture. This process can be challenging as academic institutions are notoriously difficult to change, particularly when it comes to faculty-led processes such as pedagogy. In this pa...

This article describes an active learning strategy for engaging undergraduate business students, a group often ignored in scientific pedagogy, in learning about renewable energy technology and associated trade-offs. I designed a small group activity to appeal to and engage business students, but the exercise could easily be applied for a variety of...

This article describes an active learning strategy for engaging undergraduate business students, a group often ignored in scientific pedagogy, in learning about renewable energy technology and associated trade-offs. I designed a small-group activity to appeal to and engage business students, but the exercise could easily be used for a var...

We investigated the shifts in plant carbon (C) and water dynamics by measuring rates of photosynthesis, transpiration, and instantaneous water use efficiency (WUE) in three common species of ‘‘old-field’’ plants—two C3 forb species (Plantago lanceolata and Taraxacum officinale) and one C3 grass species (Elymus repens)—under 12 experimentally altere...

Within the business world, there is growing evidence and increasing acceptance that sustainability and environmental practices are the main drivers for current innovation and success. We developed an interdisciplinary, offshore course where undergraduate business students could truly investigate and experience the benefits of environmentally and so...

Background/Question/Methods Patterns of leaf growth and morphology are highly responsive to environmental conditions. Therefore, as climate shifts in the future, we expect to see subsequent changes in leaf production and leaf characteristics of tree seedlings. We used the Boston Area Climate Experiment (BACE) to investigate the impact of warming...

Practice-oriented project work outside the classroom provides greater opportunities to explore applications of concepts derived from class lectures and textbook readings. At Babson College, a small business college, the science program is structured to develop general scientific knowledge and explore applications of science through technology. Cour...

Background/Question/Methods Important large-scale, ecosystem functions such as the flux of water and carbon dioxide across the ecosystem-atmosphere boundary are determined by physiological controls exerted by plants. Climate change is altering many of the environmental conditions that directly drive the stomatal control of plants. We investigated...

Background/Question/Methods Global climate models predict increases in average annual temperatures and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation worldwide. Until recently, experimental studies of climate change almost universally focused on the effects of a single step changes in temperature or precipitation. It is not known whether most...

The maintenance of nitrogen limitation in terrestrial ecosystems remains a central paradox in biogeochemistry. Although plants that form a symbi-otic association with nitrogen fixing bacteria should be at a competitive advantage over non-fixing plant species in N limited environments, N 2 fixing plants are uncommon in most mid-to high-latitude ecos...

Background/Question/Methods The dynamics of gas exchange between vegetation and the atmosphere is determined by both physiological controls and environmental conditions. Climate change is predicted to regionally alter several environmental conditions including air temperature, humidity, and soil moisture, all of which directly impact the timing an...

Empirical and modeling studies of the N cycle in temperate forests of eastern North America have focused on the mechanisms regulating the production of inorganic N, and assumed that only inorganic forms of N are available for plant growth. Recent isotope studies in field conditions suggest that amino acid capture is a widespread ecological phenomen...

Climate models project that by 2100, the northeastern US and eastern Canada will warm by approximately 35C, with increased winter precipitation. These changes will affect trees directly and also indirectly through effects on nuisance species, such as insect pests, pathogens, and invasive plants. We review how basic ecological principles can be used...

Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a nonnative, shade-tolerant forb that was introduced into North America in the mid-1800s. Currently, garlic mustard is spreading across the landscape at a rate of 6400 square kilometers per year. In this article, we synthesize the current state of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying garlic mustard's widespr...

1. Ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi play key roles in forest ecosystems, but the potential effects of invasive plants on EM fungal communities have not been assessed. In this study, we tested whether the non-mycorrhizal herbaceous plant Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard) can alter the abundance of EM fungal communities in North America. 2. In three fore...

Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a nonnative, shade-tolerant forb that was introduced into North America in the mid-1800s. Currently, garlic mustard is spreading across the landscape at a rate of 6400 square kilometers per year. In this article, we synthesize the current state of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying garlic mustard’s widespr...

The cytokine potential of developing T helper (Th) cells is directly shaped both positively and negatively by the cytokines expressed by the effector Th cell subsets. Here we find that the recently identified cytokine, interleukin (IL)-21, is preferentially expressed by Th2 cells when compared with Th1 cells generated in vitro and in vivo. Exposure...

Apoptosis is an integral aspect of B lymphocyte development and homeostasis and is regulated by the engagement of antigen costimulatory and cytokine receptors. Although it is well established that interleukin 4 (IL-4) is a potent anti-apoptotic cytokine for B lymphocytes, little is known about the IL-4-induced molecular events regulating cell survi...

DNA barcoding provides a relatively new method for identifying species using short DNA sequences. A region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene has been validated as a useful DNA barcode for most animal species, but plant identification using this method has been more challenging. In this study we tested three plastid DNA...