Compared to some of the long, more strenuous hikes at Yosemite National Park in California, the venture up the granite outcrop at Olmsted Point is short if a little steep. But an epic view awaits the 18 University of Georgia students who make the climb.
High above Yosemite Valley, they gaze westward to make out Half Dome in the distance. Other peaks of various shapes and features stretch on endlessly.
After snapping a few photos with their phones, the students find a seat on the stone slab and take out their orange novella-sized notebooks and pencils.
Class is now in session.
A SINGULAR OPPORTUNITY
Today’s lesson covers the sweeping history of the Ansel Adams-worthy landscape before them. And not just human history. The first lesson explains the geological features and the prehistoric phenomena that forged them.
“You’re sitting on granite that once fed a volcano,” says Deb Dooley PhD ’95, an instructor in UGA’s Interdisciplinary Field Program.
Dooley pauses for effect, then exclaims, “Whoa!”
Students learn the chemical and biological processes that determine the flora and fauna that live here. And finally, Jenn Thompson, associate research scientist in UGA’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and adjunct professor in anthropology, weaves the human story of Yosemite, dating back to the indigenous Ahwahnechee, who once called this majestic place home.
Olmsted Point is just one stop on the Interdisciplinary Field Program, a 60-day experience that takes students from Sapelo Island, Georgia, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
They travel through 20 states and to 23 national parks and monuments—including the Grand Canyon, Muir Woods, Mount Saint Helens, and Yellowstone National Park—and log nearly 12,000 miles on the road, and then tack on another 100 miles or so hiking on foot.
For adventurous students, it’s a singular opportunity.
“I’d never be able to do all this on my own no matter how hard I tried,” says Ava Macie, a second-year ecology major. “I couldn’t hit all these parks in an entire lifetime. This trip offered everything in one go.”
The journey, however, is much more than a sightseeing road trip. A rotating cadre of UGA faculty and teaching assistants leads the program. And at every stop, the travelers get a lesson about the landscape, the environment, and the human aspects of their location. Piece by piece, they develop a more holistic sense of America’s natural world, its history, its society, and perhaps its future.
EXPEDITIONARY LEARNING
The program begins with a weeklong “boot camp” at UGA’s Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, where instructors drill the basics of geology, ecology, and anthropology into the students. Lab work and excursions on the mostly undeveloped barrier island break up the class sessions. Boot camp ends with an exam to ensure students have a baseline understanding of these disciplines before the traveling begins.
And then, the crew heads West.
The caravan includes three white 12-passenger vans and a 15-foot box truck to lug duffels, camping gear, and cooking supplies. On top of students and instructors, the travelers include a handful of student staffers and two program cooks.
They cross through the South and Southwest toward California before heading to the Pacific Northwest and then around the Great Plains.
The group will stop at one location for a few days to camp (no hotel rooms on this trip) and to explore surrounding features before moving on to the next. Even on the long travel days, faculty build in stops for mini lessons at, say, a mineral outcrop on the highway, a fruit stand, or a museum.
Students have an assignment to complete at most locations, from creating a geological map of an area to sketching ecological patterns across a landscape. Assignments are etched into their orange field books; students will cycle through two or three of them on their journey. And then every couple weeks, students take exams at their campsites.
“There is a lot of fun involved in the trip, and the students definitely have an adventure, but the academic and learning component is so baked into the day-to-day that it never gets lost along the way,” says Kait Farrell PhD ’17, a lecturer in the Odum School of Ecology and UGA’s director of domestic field study.
Ava Macie puts it another way.
“I’ve never learned this much this fast in my entire life,” she says.
Students Hailey Bos (left) and Guy Kemelmakher (center right) discuss a geological feature with instructors Debra Dooley (center left) and Carolyn Cummings (right) while hiking the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail.
DAY IN THE LIFE
Typically, everyone wakes up as dawn breaks.
Breakfast (oatmeal, cereal, bagels) and hot coffee are served by 6:30.
The students might have a brief lecture at camp before beginning the day’s activities, which could include a hike, soil composition sampling, or water testing. There’s something different every day, and, usually, multiple stops fill the agenda.
After exhausting days in the field, the students have something comforting to look forward to: a hot gourmet meal.
Brothers Greg BSES ’17, MS ’21 and Eric Zock have been the program’s chefs since 2018. And they take their job seriously.
With the assistance of staff and students, the Zock brothers whip up some new, tasty meals every night. Impressive, considering dinners are prepared on a couple of picnic tables and a campfire.
Before embarking on their journey, the Zocks take requests, and throughout the course of the trip, they fulfill every single order: Asian noodle bowl, lemon salmon and artichoke dip, seafood gumbo, even sizzling steak fajitas and a chili apple crisp for Professor Aaron Thompson’s birthday. Vegan and gluten-free foods are always available.
The Zocks keep the menu fresh and raise the eyebrows of local grocery cashiers by filling several shopping carts every few days.
Luke Majors, a fourth-year biology and pre-med student, says it might be the best he’s eaten in his life.
“I was expecting when I signed up for a college road trip, it was going to be mostly sloppy Joes, hot dogs over the fire, and PB&Js, but they really turn out for dinner,” he says.
As dusk settles, there is usually an evening lesson or student presentation. The day closes with a nightly campfire for conversation and music plucked from a guitar or played from a violin before it all begins again the next morning.
35 YEARS AND COUNTING
The Interdisciplinary Field Program started in 1988 as an Honors geology field course. At the time, UGA didn’t offer many off-campus programs.
Jim Whitney, then the head of the geology department, conceived of the program as a unique way for non-geology majors to learn his field of study. His guiding principle: “It’s much more interesting to study in the national parks where you’re seeing all of these different settings.”
The inaugural trip included 10 students who rode in the geology department’s 15-seat passenger van, their bags strapped to the roof. Two cooks followed along in a pickup truck. The program brought two out-of-commission U-Haul trailers for towing cooking and camping supplies. Whitney joined part of the trip with his wife, Sandy BS ’73, PhD ’92, now a retired UGA faculty member, who served as an unpaid teaching assistant and de facto “program mom.” The Whitneys followed behind in their family van along with their dog and two sons.
That first go-getter effort was successful enough to keep the program going.
Julie Cox BS ’90, MS ’97 first attended the trip in 1992 as a graduate student teaching assistant. She and her husband, Doug Dvoracek PhD ’03, ran the program for a decade before Dvoracek died in 2022 from pancreatic cancer. Cox is now the program’s director and the chief force behind organizing and keeping the program running.
Over time, the Honors geology program morphed into its interdisciplinary form, first adding anthropology and then ecology as it became clear that focusing strictly on the geology of a location was telling only a sliver of the story. In its present form, the Interdisciplinary Field Program is the only of its kind in higher education.
With UGA’s emphasis on experiential learning, President Jere W. Morehead JD ’80 has encouraged more place-based learning opportunities. The president funded a Domestic Field Study Fellows program in 2023 to train faculty on launching new programs, including Dance in New York City and Writing and Community on the Georgia Coast.
‘WOW’ MOMENTS
Students on this 2024 trip attest to the power of learning beyond the classroom.
The day after the lecture on Olmsted Point, students embarked on a 10-mile thru-hike on Panorama Trail around the Yosemite Valley. Traveling together, Emme McCumiskey, Caty Watts, and Chloe Dierkes chatted away until a break in the trees revealed a jaw-dropping view of Nevada Fall, still miles ahead.
McCumiskey interrupted her own sentence to gawk. The environmental resources and ecology major says witnessing such spectacles makes a difference in how she retains information and concepts.
“Being able to see it in the flesh and not just in a textbook makes me feel like I’m learning more,” she says. “It’s sticking a lot better.”
It helps that faculty members are always around to answer questions or point out details that would otherwise go unnoticed.
“It’s constant office hours,” McCumiskey says. “Whenever you have a question about anything, you just go up and ask them.”
BIGGER LESSONS
Throughout the trip, students collect T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and stickers from their visits.
They also go home with new perspectives.
A recurring theme is the interplay between the natural world and human activity. Even places students once thought of as pristine wilderness, such as Sapelo Island and Yosemite, have been influenced, even shaped, by humans for centuries.
Students also come away with a clearer picture of America.
Paul Schroeder, a geology professor and program co-director since 1992, says, “In a way, they actually see more cultural diversity— and especially ecological diversity—on this program than they would in a two-week trip to a foreign country.”
Students also come away changed on a personal level.
The students work as a team to accomplish daily chores and group assignments. They gain confidence in learning, exploring, and sleeping outdoors. By trip’s end, many students forgo tents and sleep open-air in a hammock and sleeping bag where they can look up at the stars at night and wake up with the sun.
Before this summer, Ava Macie had never been camping. A few weeks in, she never wanted to sleep inside again.
“I’m a completely different person,” she says. “The thought of my dark bedroom at home sounds dreadful.”
Written by Aaron Hale MA ’16
Photos by Peter Frey BFA ’94 & Chamberlain Smith ABJ ’18