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MET plots new land & sea adventures

By Hope Green

For Jason Liardi, spending two weeks aboard the wooden schooner Alabama last summer was a perfect way to learn what life was like for sailors in centuries past.

	Emily Shugarman (SED'03) helps haul a line to raise the main sail on the tall ship Alabama during MET's Maritime History in the Atlantic World course last summer. Photo by Vernon Doucette

As a student in Metropolitan College's course Maritime History in the Atlantic World, he helped set the sails of the tall ship, hosed the deck with saltwater each morning, and often joined his classmates in the tricky maneuver of raising an anchor on a windlass.

"The captain really wanted us to have that old-time experience, and I think he did a great job of it," says Liardi (CAS'03). "It was one of the greatest courses I've taken at BU."

That same summer, nature enthusiast Shang-Wayne Tee (SHA'04) took MET's basic photography course on Martha's Vineyard. One of his achievements during the intensive two-week session was capturing the image of an osprey dipping its talons into the ocean for a fish.

"When I returned to BU in the fall," he says, "I took my camera with me wherever I went because there were these incredible sunsets in Boston, and I had never noticed things like that before. None of us who took the course ever looked at photography the same way again."

Until now MET has offered a small number of residential summer courses that immerse students in natural settings as part of their learning experience, along with an international business course in Brussels. But this year the college has expanded its menu of academic adventures, offering a total of 17 courses in a program called Explorations in Learning.

Participants in Alabama voyages now may consider two additional on-board courses: Maritime History of New England and Classics of Maritime Literature. On Martha's Vineyard, new courses will focus on the island's history and coastal environments.

Elsewhere, marine science students will travel by sea kayak into the protected bays of the Gulf of Maine. A basic field ecology course at BU's Sargent Center for Outdoor Education in Hancock, N.H., will teach students how to map bird territories, band bats, and conduct experiments in the wild. Sargent will also be the site of new MET courses in business management, poetry, and landscape painting.

In MET's new marine science course, professional guides from the Maine Island Kayak Company will provide instruction on how to navigate the protected bays in the Gulf of Maine. Above, kayakers pass the Ram Island Light in Casco Bay.

Closer to campus, topics of study will be Boston Harbor ecology, Boston architecture, and megaprojects such as the Big Dig and the harbor cleanup.
"I think we have a winning combination of courses taught by incredible instructors in exciting locations," says Robyn Friedman, MET coordinator of academic services and director of Explorations in Learning. "We started offering intensive, fun, rigorous learning adventures two years ago, originally on the tall ship H.M.S. Rose, and what we found is that students really appreciated the intimacy of these experiential courses."

Typically the courses run 5 to 14 consecutive days and are offered with college credit or as an audit. Academic rigor is a key ingredient, with daily lectures and plenty of required reading and writing assignments. Students in the new maritime literature course will read 11 different works, such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Rudyard Kipling's Kon Tiki, and respond to the course readings in critical essays, response writings, and journal entries.

In the New Hampshire field ecology course, taught by Fred Wasserman, a CAS associate professor of biology and winner of the 2001 Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching, students will conduct daily experiments and attend evening lectures on such topics as competition, predation, coevolution, and community dynamics.

Jay Halfond, dean of Metropolitan College, says Explorations in Learning helps fulfill MET's mission to pioneer innovative programs at BU.

"I see MET serving an avant-garde role and being an incubator for these kinds of courses for the rest of the University," he says. "These courses, in unusual settings, show that learning can be hands-on and experience-based without compromising academic rigor. Pedagogically, it's really quite cutting edge."

For more information, visit www.bu.edu/met/programs/explorations.

8 March 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations