Spring 2006 Contents

Spring 2006 In Focus Home

As part of the Luce semester, students spent two days at Smith Island, Md. They met with some of the island’s 640 residents and studied oyster diseases, algal blooms and the effects of farming on the health of the Chesapeake Bay. They also went out on a boat with representatives of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. From left, are: Scott Morello ’06, Kelly Brzezinski ’06 and Professor Candie Wilderman. “We pulled in crab pots that we had baited the day before,” Wilderman says. “This is one of the ‘catch’ … a beautiful healthy Chesapeake blue crab (Callinectus sapidus)!”

A Watershed Experience

These students laughed, cried, danced and learned more than they ever thought possible. They got wet—also cold, hot and sweaty. They traveled far, felt exhausted and became energized.

It’s called the Luce semester—a bold, new venture in intensive study, hands-on research and experiential learning.

Begun with a five-year, $460,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Luce semester is a watershed-based integrated field semester project in which students take the equivalent of a full four-course load in one intensive course.

In the fall, 15 students and their instructors—Candie Wilderman, professor of environmental science; Michael Heiman, professor of environmental studies and geography; and Lauren Imgrund, director of the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM)—embarked upon this semester-long lesson on the connections between stressed aquatic systems and the communities that depend on them.

The Luce students took their studies from the classroom to the field. They spent two days kayaking on the upper Susquehanna River sampling acid-mine drainage; one week in the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic coast region, including Smith Island, studying stressed fisheries, coastal erosion and the plight of local watermen; and one day each at a creek, in a paper mill and at a poultry facility, focusing on the watershed impact from agriculture and industry.

But the three-week trip to Louisiana—something the Luce instructors had been planning for more than a year—almost had to be abandoned in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and then Rita. Unwilling to give up, this group dug in and made the trip happen.

To get an idea of their experiences, below is an excerpt from the Luce blog, an online journal in which students wrote about the trip as it progressed.

Nov. 1, 2005 – Clarksdale, Miss.
… After dinner we were back in the vans driving downtown to find Red’s, a local juke joint. We walked in to find a cozy room with plastic tarps covering the ceiling. There we met Big Jack Johnson—a world famous blues musician whom Professor Heiman got to play especially for us. He and his band played for two straight hours, while we, including our professors, “cut a rug.” The next two hours were spent deep in conversation about the blues, the state of the world and life on the Mississippi. I found it interesting to talk with these people whose lives were dependent on the blues and the mighty Mississippi.

… Thus ended day three of what is already turning out to be a moving cultural experience. We may have come here to learn about the Mississippi River and its watershed but, as we learned in one of our readings, this is a landscape of people, and as studiers of this changing landscape, we must also study the people.

Kelly Brzezinski ’06

The Luce blog contains descriptions of the students’ experiences in such places as the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. To read more, go to: www.dickinson.edu/departments/envst/, and see the story in the Dickinson Magazine’s spring issue.