9354777 Alstad I am the author of an instructional software package designed to support university courses in ecology and evolutionary biology. Development of my present version, Populus 3.0, was funded by grants from IBM, the University of Minnesota, and the NSF. It has proven to be an extremely successful pedagogical tool here at Minnesota, and is currently in use at more than 350 institutions, worldwide. I request additional UCCD funding to pursue four major objectives, including (1) improvement of the narrative text offered to explain Populus models both on screen and in a companion book, (2) expanded coverage with new models, (3) "porting" of the package to a new operating system, and (4) an initiative to increase the use of Populus in small colleges. In addition to these new efforts, I will continue to debug and maintain the program, and curate the free distribution that will maximize its use. ***y
