GEOFYRST

As participants in GEOFYRST (Geologic Experience Outdoors: the First Year Regional Summer Trip), 11 freshmen and one transfer student explored the geology and hydrology of the Catskill Mountains, the Berkshire Hills and Cape Cod last August.

You don’t have to be especially interested in earth science to go on the annual trip, which gives students a head start earning lab credit for the Introduction to Geology course they’ll take in the fall. All incoming freshmen are invited to apply for the trip, which costs about $100, and the 2012 group included students with academic interests ranging from biology to music industry.

For most students, it’s their first real field experience. While hiking in the Catskills, studying soil erosion at a Cape Cod beach and examining dinosaur tracks in Massachusetts, students gain valuable skills, including recording observations in field notebooks and using tools such as ground-penetrating radar.

In between field experiences, they bond with other new students, faculty members and peer mentors while setting up tents, cooking meals and roasting marshmallows over the campfire.

“It gets the students out in the field and they form a cohort that really knows each other well, and that acts like a family,” said Assistant Professor Martha L. Growdon, one of three Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences faculty members who went on the 2012 trip. “When they come back into the class they participate; they ask questions.”

Now approaching its seventh year, GEOFYRST is a relatively unique program with long-term positive effects. Very few colleges across the country offer this type of opportunity, and students who participate tend to excel academically and become campus leaders.

Catherine Freeney, a freshman from Norwood, N.J., said the experience of being immersed in geology made her more curious about the natural world. “After the trip I would look at things – like pictures of places I’ve been – and try to figure out how things were formed. It’s really a habit I have now.”

Olatunbosun (Ola) Oyenuga, a freshman from Brooklyn who camped and hiked for the first time ever on the trip, said there’s no substitute for standing at the top of a waterfall or discovering a piece of basalt (his favorite rock from the trip). “You’ve gotta go out there and actually see it for yourself.”