It wasn't your typical first impression of the Grand Canyon. "You couldn't see it," says Tamara Convertino-Waage, "but you could feel it."
Tamara and her Earth Semester classmates, at Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center near Tucson, Ariz., had arrived late at the canyon. "We set up camp in the dark. Then a group of us hiked to the rim that first night." Convertino-Waage, a junior, had never before visited the Grand Canyon.
"There was no moonlight, or very little, so you couldn't see down into the canyon. But you could feel the wind coming up, hitting your face. You knew there was a deep trench there. It was so intense."
Autumn Earth Semester students spend a week at the Grand Canyon, studying plant ecology along the rim of the canyon, geology within the canyon and socioeconomic issues of the people in the surrounding Colorado Plateau.
Spring Earth Semester students take their big field trip during the first week of April to the lower Colorado River and the Anza-Borrego desert preserve in southern California. Faculty field coordinator Wylie Cox says the spring trip is very mobile. "We start at Parker Dam on the Colorado looking at water policy issues of the American Southwest. We cover geology and desert ecology at Anza-Borrego and a variety of environmental issues, including pesticide contamination and geo-thermal energy production, at the Salton Sea."
Both fall and spring semester students journey to northern Sonora for a week of study on the shores of Mexico's Sea of Cortez—and those are just the major field trips.
These research excursions have always been huge favorites of the more than 1,000 undergraduate students who have attended programs at Biosphere2, one of the largest living laboratories in the world. And they play a crucial role in the program.
"First of all," says Cox, "the fieldwork allows students to apply in-class learning, especially science learning, in a real world setting. They can actually experience the challenges and rewards—and hard work—of doing real scientific work," he says. "It is an insight into the nature of science."
The real world setting, says Cox, also enhances the consideration of cultural and economic issues. "Hearing and speaking with people who are involved in the actual issues that students learned about in class leads to a broader understanding of the need for integrated approaches to global sustainability."
"At the Grand Canyon we work together and play together. The students live together in small tents. They cook for each other, cook for the whole group. These out of classroom events—field trips—continue the process of relationship building among students and faculty."
Autumn Stevenson admits that her relationships became much closer as she hiked the canyon with a teaching assistant guide and a handful of other students. "Within the span of a day we shared so many intense experiences," says Stevenson, who attended Earth Semester in 1998. "We learned, played, sang and ate together. Climbing out, we were in pain together. But we stuck together and suffered together and encouraged each other."
Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center offers enrollment to students around the world in two undergraduate programs: Earth science and astronomy. Earth Semester integrates biology, geology and social science into a 16-credit- hour, 16-week course of study. Earth Semester immerses students in interdisciplinary academics and fieldwork, team research projects and collaborative exercises, all under the theme of planetary science and management.
The centerpiece of the 16-credit, 16-week Universe Semester program is the new Biosphere 2 Observatory, with its 24-inch telescope. The program is able to take advantage of southern Arizona's status as a premier center for astronomical observation. Guest lectures feature world-class astronomers, while field trips take students to the nearby Kitt Peak National Observatory. Later this spring the students will tour the famed Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona, where some of the most technologically advanced telescope mirrors in the world are produced.
The current group of Universe Semester students hits the road in early April for a week-long field trip. It includes visits to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope complex near Socorro, N.M., and the Mt. Graham telescope complex in southeastern Arizona.
Both programs are now accepting applications for the summer and fall semesters. Science and non-science majors are encouraged to attend. Further information and an online application is available by calling (212) 854-8144.