I am overwhelmed with nostalgia as I write about my next adventure from the comfort of an NC State dorm room in Bragaw Hall. Being here brings back floods of memories from almost 9 years ago of moving to college for the first time.
Memories of saying goodbye to my parents and sister. Being excited for the journey ahead of being independent while also harboring feelings of sadness that my family would be leaving me there alone.
Memories of meeting my first dorm friend, Katie Gallo, who then became one of my best friends.
Memories of my pre-college outdoor experience, SUNY Geneseo’s Adirondack Adventure, where I was introduced to other bright-eyed incoming freshmen like myself who wanted to experience nature and make a few friends before diving into the full-blown college experience.
The students in the GeoJourney program will experience much of the same things I did, some on a much larger scale. I guess I should first explain what my next adventure entails. I will be serving as the graduate teaching assistant for a brand new introductory NC State geology course, Colorado River GeoJourney. This course is part of a larger National Science Foundation grant, Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Pathways into Geoscience program (also referred to as IUSE: GEOPATHS for short) titled ‘Expanding Geology Discovery Opportunities Beyond the Classroom’. It’s main goal is to increase diversity in the geosciences and overall numbers of students pursuing undergraduate degrees in the geosciences. The specific role of GeoJourney is to provide authentic geologic field experiences to 12 incoming freshmen students by taking them on a 2-week journey down the Colorado River to learn about the spectacular geology surrounding it. I will be teaching the course alongside Dr. Karl Wegmann, Assistant professor (and my PhD co-advisor) at NC State and Chester Brewer, Associate director of the University Scholars Program at NC State, both of whom have extensive experience leading outdoor educational experiences. It’s exciting and inspiring to work with these two who clearly love what they do.
Our trip will involve some classroom lectures and labs before we depart for the field, followed by 2 weeks of traveling from Denver, Colorado to Las Vegas, Nevada following the Colorado River and some of its tributaries. We will see some amazing geology along the way and discuss the interactions between the geology and the Colorado River, along with the impacts on the surrounding cities. Our full route, by day, is embedded in an interactive Google Map below. Feel free to follow us on our journey. It is my intention to provide updates along the way but given that we likely will not have an internet connection or cell service most days, this might not be as possible as I’d hoped it might be.
Today began our face-to-face part of the course with students arriving around 4pm for check in. After families said their 5th goodbye’s (after all, they are leaving their children with strangers for 2 weeks, possibly for the first time, to travel to multiple states thousands of miles away) we headed to Fountain dining hall for dinner. An all-you-can-eat buffet is always a great way to jump right into meeting people for the first time. Once we were all re-fueled, we got to know each other with some name games and a quick trip to NC State’s Gregg Museum of Art and Design just before it closed around dusk.
We then parted ways from Chester and Karl, and the students and I headed back to the dorms. After dropping our stuff off from the day we made a quick Hillsborough Street run to grab some needed items at Target and just check out the Hillsborough scene.
It has been a whirlwind of a summer preparing for this trip and now that the students are finally here it is exciting to see it all coming together! Tomorrow will be filled with some educational time followed by some basic camping prep. Stay tuned for updates and I will leave you with a picture of Karl trying to untangle some compasses from earlier today. How does this happen every time!?
