If you are a student of geology or geological engineering, field camp is
required for graduation by most universities. The camps involve several weeks of
working and living in close quarters, often in remote locations. Students
scramble up and down steep rocky slopes in the daytime and pour over data and
maps into the wee hours of the night. It’s hot, it’s dirty, it’s hard and if
you’re a geologist, it’s the best time of your life.
But
2020 put the brakes on field camps around the world. Campus shutdowns in the
spring left thousands of faculty and students in hundreds of university earth
science programs scrambling to find solutions. Amidst the shutdowns, there was a
strong demand for students who needed to complete their geology field camps to finish
their degree. One group of faculty at the Black
Hills Natural Science Field Station (BHNSFS) run by South
Dakota Mines found a
way forward.
A team of
faculty worked out a plan that included adherence to CDC guidelines for
reducing the spread of COVID-19, including mask wearing, social distancing and small,
isolated teams of students. Forehead temperature checks were frequently taken,
and when traveling together teams drove with the windows down, even in the
rain, to keep the fresh air flowing. Outdoor field work was combined with
online coursework, this hybrid model reduced interactions indoors that could
spread the virus. “We purposefully overloaded the beginning of the course so as
to keep students busy at home, in quarantine, for the 14 days prior to the
start of the in-person field course,” says Nuri Uzunlar, Ph.D., field camp
director and professor of geology and geological engineering at South Dakota
Mines.
Faculty
like Jon Rotzien, Ph.D., president of Basin Dynamics, LLC and an adjunct
professor at the University of Houston, point out that fully online geology
courses cannot replace the experiences of making geologic maps in the field. “The
fundamental skills that students learn throughout the coursework of an
undergraduate geology program also require time studying rocks and the natural
world in the great outdoors,” adds Ryan Sincavage, Ph.D., an assistant professor
at Radford University.
Students
and faculty at the camp were also restricted from going out to restaurants and
bars in the evenings. This reduced the likelihood that someone could become
infected off site during the course. “If a student or instructor were to become
symptomatic at any time during the camp, we had plans to place the entire
cohort under quarantine,” says Chris Pellowski, Ph.D., instructor in the
Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at South Dakota Mines.
In
a normal year, the Black Hills Natural Sciences Field Station offers camps in
many corners of the world, Turkey, New Zealand, France, Spain, Morocco,
Iceland, Ecuador, Nepal and the United States. But this year, international
travel restrictions and COVID-19 safety necessity cancelled all but a few camps
that took place in the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota and
Wyoming.
Overall,
the course involved more than 30 students, nine instructors, the field station
director and administrative staff from South Dakota Mines and the Board of
Regents for the State of South Dakota. “Having firsthand served as an
instructor, for several of us it took up to 200 hours to deliver one online
module and many more hours to complete the field phase of the hybrid course,” says
Uzunlar. “Many would say, ‘Why do this if it clearly took a large budget to
deliver?’ Simple. We did it for the profession which requires irreplaceable
field experience and of course for our students. We felt we could make a small
contribution by helping them finish their undergraduate degrees and get out of
school and onto their careers.”
Two weeks after
the course, no students, staff or faculty associated with the camp showed
COVID-19 symptoms or reported any positive test results. “While the challenges
were numerous, we continue to be thankful for being able to get outdoors and
study geology in the field this year, as well as get out of our homes. Hopefully
all of our hybrid online and field course participants continue to stay
healthy, happy and enthusiastic about the many benefits of field geology,” Uzunlar
adds.
The
academic paper characterizing this experience is now being reviewed by the Journal
of Geoscience Education, as well as two abstracts into the Geological
Society of America Annual Meeting. Contributing faculty include Jon Rotzien, Ryan Sincavage, Nuri Uzunlar and Yann Gavillot.