Around the world in seven days of Fall Break

While most freshmen went home for Fall Break, the students in FRS 175: Signals, Yardsticks and Tipping Points of Global Warming traveled to Bermuda for their first vacations as college students to research the effects of global warming on ocean environments.

The class trip — offered for the first time this year — featured snorkeling in a mangrove forest, identifying species of coral and fish and running experiments to pinpoint triggers of bleaching in coral.

"We got a lot of hands-on experience and saw some of the actual causes of global warming," Mike DiStefano '11, who took the class, said. "We went out and collected coral, and you can't really get coral unless you have a permit for it."

The freshman seminar was one of at least four classes that went on week-long, University-funded trips during Fall Break this year. Another freshman seminar, FRS 149: Earth's Changing Surface and Climate conducted research projects in Mono Lake, Calif., while students in GEO 255: Life in the Universe traveled west to Yellowstone Park, Wy. Meanwhile, ART 440: Seminar in Renaissance Art — a class that was offered for the first time this year — featured a trip to Venice, Italy, to get a first-person look at some of the works it had studied.

Ecology and evolutionary biology lecturer Eileen Zerba, who taught the seminar that went to Bermuda earlier this semester, said the trip was integral to her efforts to demonstrate the gravity of global warming. "It's a very timely and conscious subject matter — it's all over the news," she said. "You can read about it and discuss it, but going out into the field and actually experiencing it is a different kind of learning experience. I hate to think that maybe those reefs won't be around later on."

Though the trip to Bermuda was free, it was "certainly not a vacation," Zerba said. "The students work very hard throughout the whole trip, but I do incorporate some fun elements because I want them to experience the people there and the environment there."

Art and archaeology professor Patricia Brown, who taught ART 440, agreed that class trips are a crucial way to give students a firsthand look at the subjects they have been studying. "In art history, it's hard to convey a sense of things without actually seeing them in context," she said. "Particularly for architecture, I think it's important to see it as it is."

Students spent about half the trip exploring Venice as a group and the other half doing independent work and taking photographs of monuments to be used for an upcoming website.

Brown said the application process for the course tried to weed out applicants who seemed only interested in the trip to Venice. "There is a lot of work," she said of the course's requirements. "There's a lot of reading, and [the students] really had to get up to speed before we went. And there's quite a bit of writing when we get back."

FRS 149 was also offered for the first time this year, though geosciences courses have taken class trips to the West Coast for the last 15 years.

Geosciences assistant professor Frederik Simons, who co-taught the seminar, said the trip's purpose was to motivate and interest students who might not have previously considered studying geology or thought of themselves as scientists. "We tried to take high school students and turn them into natural scientists," he said. "We told them that anyone, regardless of their prior exposure, can ask questions about the natural world ... You go look at a volcano and ask why is it here, how old is it, what is it made of, why is it here and not somewhere else."

Nora Xu '11 said she had never considered taking geology before, but was motivated to enroll in the class because of the prospect of field experience. "We learned so much more on the trip than you would in the classroom, partially because we never stopped learning," she said. "In the class there's a set time. On the trip, every minute's up for grabs."

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Another student in the class, Sophie Jin '11, recalled swimming in Death Valley at midnight, looking at constellations in a nearly pollution-free sky and climbing a crater made completely of obsidian glass as some of her most memorable experiences.

She added that the trip has changed her perceptions of the natural world. "I don't think I'll ever look at mountains and rocks again without thinking about the seminar," she said. "Before, I would look at landforms and not really think about what they could tell us about the earth's beginnings ... but it's definitely something I try to think about now."

Simons said that courses including lengthy field trips are not a new trend in the department, which offers two to three such classes every year. "It's what geology has been for the last 300 years," he said. "We need to take students out in the field because we study natural processes that you can't recreate."

He added that the seminar will be offered for the next two years. "It could change their lives — that's the idea," he said of the trip's effect on students. "It could make them do something they've never done before or thought about before."