Geology class heads to California

During the next two weeks, 15 students will be playing ultimate frisbee in Death Valley, Calif. They will be hiking in craters formed by volcanic eruptions, skiing down California's Mammoth Mountain, and observing 5,000 year-old bristlecone pine trees with the U.S. Forrest Service.\nThey will also be receiving three credits.\nThe course, Volcanoes of the Eastern Sierra Nevada: Geology and Natural Heritage of the Long Valley Caldera, is a four-week long field-oriented course the department of geological sciences and Collins Living Learning Center developed last year. Cancelled last summer due to low enrollment, the class has reemerged, taught by Associate Professor of Geological Sciences Michael Hamburger and senior research scientist with the Indiana Geological Survey, John Rupp.\n"This was developed in conjunction with Collins, and we decided to co-list it as a (College Of Arts and Sciences) topics course," Hamburger said. \nHowever, the class, he said, is open to students other than Collins residents.\n"It typifies the kind of intensive inquiry oriented courses that Collins likes to offer. For many years they have been eager to do something more ambitious," he said. \nModeled after an intensive seminar offered annually at Princeton University, Hamburger said if all goes well the course will be offered again next summer.\nDuring the spring semester, the course included an intensive seminar session to introduce students to critical and societal issues surrounding the natural history of eastern California's Sierra Nevada mountain chain. The group must keep daily individual journals during the excursion and will be expected to hand in a 10-15 page research paper upon returning to Bloomington, on a topic related to the area of study. \n"This is just a spectacular field area for studying a variety of geological and environmental and public policy issues," Hamburger said. \nBecause the course is hands-on, Hamburger said the students, even those who are not majoring in science, which happens to be a relatively large portion of the class, will enjoy the learning experience in the field.\n"This is really a new approach to emphasize experiential learning at an introductory level in a natural setting," Hamburger said. "The students get a chance to do some hands on exploration. Most of the students have no previous science background. We have a mixture of majors, mostly freshmen and sophomores."\nThe group will focus mostly on the history of volcanoes, although Hamburger said they will also be encountering mountains, glaciers and deserts.\n"It's a power packed trip. We're gonna be moving from early morning to sunset everyday," Hamburger said. The class shipped out bright and early Saturday morning, its flight departing from Indianapolis at 6:45 a.m. Their first stop is Death Valley. There they plan to discuss Precambrian through middle Paleozoic strata and structural processes while traversing the sand dunes.\nThen they will head to Mammoth Mountain where they will be discussing regional geology and glacial and fluvial erosion of Sierra Nevada.\nAmong many other adventures, day 10 of the trip lands the group at Long Valley where they plan to study hydrothermal systems while performing geochemical sampling. They will be assessing freshwater streams and discussing the water quality and its environmental impact with the help of faculty from the University of California at Santa Barbara.\nTwo days later, the group will plant themselves in the midst of a major environmental controversy surrounding Mono Lake.\n"It's a very important environmental issue related to water use in the eastern Sierras," Hamburger said. "We will be at the heart of a very intensive controversy about California water use over the past 60 years," he said. "The ecological health of this lake has been at the heart of this legal and political controversy."\nThe group has plans to meet with the leaders of the debate, and discuss water policy with representatives from Mono Lake Committee and the Los Angeles Division of Water and Power. \nRegardless of the special course fee of $495 and the price of airfare to and from L.A., the students think the expense will be well worth it.\nJunior Caroline Pew said she couldn't pass up an opportunity like this one. Geology is her hobby, and she hopes to become more familiar with volcanic processes, particularly those involved in the formation of rocks.\n"I really enjoy traveling and studying geology in a hands on atmosphere," Pew said. "This class is really ideal for my learning style." \nSenior Mariel Berger said the trip models a past experience she had studying abroad in Costa Rica.\n"The only way to learn Spanish is to be in a Spanish speaking country. The books are a dry, feeble attempt to capture the essence of a language," Berger said about studying in Costa Rica.\nThe natural setting of the course is intended to aid the learning process, making it easier to comprehend the intricacies of such diverse ecosystems.\n"I never learn anything from my classes because the material is disconnected to life," Berger said. "Knowledge comes from actual experience, so after I climb through a volcano I will be a geology connossieur"