Professor Rob Dunbar extols the value of fieldwork
Geological and environmental sciences Professor Rob Dunbar gave a talk titled “Teaching Outside the Walls” for the Award Winning Teachers on Teaching series, presented by the Center on Teaching and Learning.
Attention faculty: Tired of conventional classroom lectures? Want to reinvigorate your lesson plan? Then consider moving your class to an exotic locale—a remote Pacific atoll, perhaps, or maybe an Antarctic ice sheet. Rob Dunbar, a professor of geological and environmental sciences (GES), teaches undergraduate courses in both locations and says the experience is unlike any other in academia.
"Remote fieldwork really is the ultimate form of group learning," he said. "You're living [and working] together 24 hours a day."
Dunbar discussed the rewards and challenges of undergraduate field courses at a May 18 lecture, "Teaching Outside the Walls," the last installment in this year's "Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching" series sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning.
An authority on global climate change in marine and freshwater environments, Dunbar has worked in some of the wildest places on Earth, including Antarctica, Lake Titicaca, Easter Island and Palmyra Atoll. Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1997, he has been a strong advocate for undergraduate field study, arguing that one of the best ways to learn about the complex biological and physical processes that define an ecosystem is by going directly to the ecosystem itself.
"It's a great way to teach analytical thinking," he said. "There are some classes that must be taught in the classroom, but fewer than you might imagine."
Polar survivalAmong his favorite field classes is GES 38, a freshman seminar on polar exploration that includes a weekend camping trip in the snow-covered Sierra Nevada Mountains. About 15 students typically participate in the course, which includes skiing, digging snow shelters and the opportunity to work with a sled dog team. It's a great way to teach the fundamentals of physics, Dunbar explained, such as how skis move through snow or the mechanics of avalanches.
To demonstrate life in the Sierra camp, Dunbar showed a video he shot in 2004 when the class was caught in a 50-knot windstorm, one of the worst on record. "Some of the smaller students were being blown off to the side, nobody could see each other, and I thought, my God, we're going to lose each other," he recalled. "But the fact is, I brought them all back alive, and they felt so happy about this. That was their final exam—to survive a night under polar conditions."
Dunbar recommended that teachers design field courses that mirror their own research interests. "To the extent that you can, just pick the things that are the most fun for you to talk about," he said. "Don't feel bad about being selfish in that way, because you will bring this level of energy and enthusiasm to your lectures and to your topics that your students just feed off of."
Antarctic voyageThat philosophy led him to launch a 12-unit undergraduate course in winter 2001 on the biogeochemistry of the southern oceans—a two-month trip from Australia to Antarctica and then Africa aboard a National Science Foundation (NSF) research vessel. Dunbar recalled his feelings prior to the trip.
"Our reputation is on the line," he said. "We have to publish papers if we want to get funded [by NSF] again. It's an interesting experiment—this cruise is going to ride on the backs of undergraduate labor."
During the cruise, students had to endure ice-choked waters and extremely rough seas. "The classroom, unfortunately, is on the upper deck of the ship," Dunbar said. "The students are really good. They'd be in there getting green, run out for a while, throw up and then come back in."
Once the ship arrived in Antarctica, a 110-foot-long hollow tube was dropped vertically into the seafloor. The muddy contents of the tube, which provides a geological record of ancient climate change in Antarctica, were then analyzed by students in onboard laboratories. Throughout the trip, the undergrads put in 14-hour days, seven days a week, 10 weeks in a row. "Everybody works like a dog out there," Dunbar said. "[But] my impression is nobody gets burned out."
Careful screeningDid the experiment work? "What NSF cares about first and foremost is research productivity," Dunbar said, noting that the Antarctic cruise so far has generated about a dozen peer-reviewed papers—seven with undergraduate co-authors and four with undergraduate lead authors.
"Our feeling is that NSF will appreciate that we did this experiment, and that results showed that we can involve undergraduates as part of the learning process," he added.
His experiences in Antarctica and teaching other remote field courses, such as Hopkins Marine Station's Stanford@Sea program (which includes a five-week sailing cruise from Hawaii to isolated Pacific islands), led Dunbar to offer this piece of advice: "Choose your students carefully. You spend a lot of time out in the field with these folks, so you want to make sure they have some resiliency to the trials and tribulations of life at sea."
The School of Earth Sciences offers field courses closer to home, in places like Monterey Bay and Death Valley, and Dunbar encourages other schools to follow suit. "Teaching and learning in the field looks like it's just too much fun," he said. "Personally, I find that the single most rewarding teaching that I do."
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