F I E L D S ES S I O N S BY JENNIFER MISKIMINS
Well, as with everything in the year 2020, our field session classes were significantly impacted this spring, and some major and unusual steps were needed to address them. In April, the decision was made to postpone PEGN 315, Field Session I - during which our students going into their junior year visit field locations and companies - to August. In essence, taking this one week course that generally oc- curs the week immediately after spring semester and moving it to the week right before the fall semester was to start in August.
could convert their entire six-week field course to online, we could definitely convert our two-week offering to online!
In early June, when essential travel was allowed by the school, our two adjunct geology faculty Wes Buchanan and Cankut Kandocki, PE TA alum Kagan Kutun, PhD candidate, and myself headed over to NW Colorado and Vernal, UT, and videoed rocks, rocks, and more rocks for several days. We recorded GoPro videos of the different outcrop and field locations and archived as much footage as possible. From there, an online version of the Massadona field camp came to life! The two weeks’ worth of material was trimmed back a little bit and then spread out over the six weeks of Summer Session II from June 22 to July 31 to help out students that either had internships or oth- er pre-existing commitments.
Wes staring off into space asking the critical philosophical questions – Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? How do we take field camp
online?
However, as the summer progressed and so many other concerns began to arise, such as taking +75 students, faculty, and staff on an airplane, arranging hotels and other travel aspects, trying to figure out socially distanced company visits, etc., etc., and etc., the difficult decision was made to completely cancel the PEGN 315 course for this year. This class doesn’t lend itself at all to an online environment and couldn’t be converted to such, therefore, students have been given the one-time-only op - portunity to proceed in their studies without this course or wait and take it next year. We’d like to thank all of our usual partners and companies that host us and who contin - ued to reach out and ask how they could help. We can’t wait to see you in 2021!
As to be expected, there were a few hiccups with the first couple of assignments while everybody adjusted to the online option, howev - er, overall it went surprisingly well. Of course, as all of you alumni know, nothing will ever replace actually being there!! But, as with everything else right now, we just shot for the best that could be done under the circumstances, and overall, we’ve had mostly posi - tive feedback. Several students obviously expressed disappointment in not being able to go out, and I’m sure several breathed huge sighs of relief too! For those that are interested, we have offered to take them out to the field area next spring, and do a quick 2-3 day tour of the area and show them what it actually looks like not on the GoPro. Several have expressed an interest in doing this, and we hope to make it happen in March or April next spring.
Obviously, we hope that next year, we’ll return to operations as usu - al and will have some of the usual fun photos to share with you. Somehow taking a screen shot of a Zoom class just doesn’t quite do it justice!
In regards to the second field session class, PEGN 316, and the infamous Massadona camp, an equally difficult deci - sion was made to convert this course to an online offering. It is a critical link between our students’ junior and senior classes and postponing to next summer just wasn’t an option. We were not the only Mines’ department that had to con- vert their field session to an online setting, and we figured that if the geology department
Cankut and Kagan acting as human scales in Dinosaur National Monument.
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