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On Saturday April 18, 2009, a group of 10 biology students from Oglethorpe University (plus Dr. Karen Schmeichel) set out on an AirTran-sponsored day-trip to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. This, in fact was our second such trip, the first one in April 2007 having been a huge success.
This year many of the students on the trip were enrolled in BIO 416- Evolution, a senior level class which functions as a capstone-type course, tying together content from a variety of biological disciplines. Our intent was to focus on the “Evolving Planet” display which organizes the museum’s impressive permanent collection of fossils, some of which date back millions of years, into a comprehensible unit. As with our previous visit in 2007, this exhibit provided a satisfying overview of the content covered throughout our class and allowed us to see many specimens in person that we had observed only in photographs in the classroom.
Only one of the 10 students in our group had ever been to Chicago before, so this trip also provided a chance for these individuals to get a bit of northern expossure. The weather in the city was fabulous on April 18 and thus some students were lured outside of the museum proper in the afternoon to explore the greater museum campus and the local shores of Lake Michigan as well. In doing so they got a general feel of the energy and scenery of this bustling Midwest city.
During our flight home from Chicago, the students were enthusiastic but exhausted. Many of them knew that final exams and projects loomed on the horizon, but none regretted having spent a day in late April travelling across the country for a quick tour of one of our country’s most important sites of natural history preservation and research. The students had enough energy to search the plane for souvenir copies of the April “Go” magazine which featured an Oglethorpe-AirTran partnership program advertisement as well as a picture of their classmate, Jessica Daniel, on the contents page in reference to the April 2009 Sweetwater Festival.
A big thanks to AirTran for making unique learning opportunities like this possible!
Dr. Karen Schmeichel,
assistant professor of biology
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| K. Pulley, F. Chiadmi, B. Bhakri in the museum atrium. |
A. Woychek measuring up to an Ediacaran fossil. |
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