Vacation Learning: No summer bummer
August 13, 2007For the third straight summer, Rowan geography professor Denyse Lemaire led students around the globe in 2007 for instruction way too big for the classroom.
Some landed on the beachhead at Normandy, France, and scaled the rocky cliffs for a Memorial Day lesson in freedom and courage.
Others toured the American West and 14 National Parks including Yellowstone, a geologic wonder atop a massive caldera volcano.
Still others took a 25-day trip through New Zealand, Australia and Tahiti where they learned about ancient aboriginal culture and the modern world down under.
Lemaire, who visited nearly 70 nations prior to the summer trips, believes travel provides a unique opportunity for learning that one simply cannot get on a campus.
In Normandy, for example, site of the World War II invasion by Allied forces memorialized in the movie Saving Private Ryan, students imagined taking part in the assault.
"I bring them to the beach as if they\'re disembarking from the barges," Lemaire said days before her first group left. "I have them develop a strategy to get to the top where the German army was waiting. Then, I have them climb to the top where they imagine they are German soldiers trying to stop the invasion."
Lemaire expected the Normandy experience to make a huge impression on her charges. Following their assault on the craggy heights students were to meet two survivors from the invasion and attend a Memorial Day ceremony at the American cemetery nearby to commemorate the battle\'s dead and wounded.
"It\'s very emotional," said Lemaire, a native of France who grew up between Paris and the Belgian border. "I believe if history is lived it becomes more personal, not just a few lines in a book."
Lemaire, a Rowan faculty member since 1998, holds a Ph.D. in science from the University of Brussels and master\'s degrees in geophysics and geography, all of which is helpful in her travel with students.
For the National Parks trip Lemaire planned on discussing natural geologic activity such as that occurring within the massive, nervous caldera beneath Yellowstone and other volcanoes including Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens in Oregon and Mammoth Lakes in California.
She began the summer travel program, in which she arranges world-class trips for students at cost, in 2005, with a 17-day trip to China.
Prior to the 2007 trips Lemaire composed an exhaustive Web site detailing her plans and maintained a daily travel blog to keep parents, faculty and friends informed en route.
In all, more than three dozen students took part in the 2007 summer trips, many of them returnees from previous excursions with Lemaire, earning 3-4 credits per trip. To qualify for the credits (which were not included in the cost of the trip) students were expected to make PowerPoint presentations and take part in discussions about what they saw, heard and felt along the way. In addition, rotating student teams took photographs of what they did and saw and contributed to the blogs each day.
The point of it all, Lemaire said, is fun, great food and developing an appreciation for other cultures.
"I don't use travel agencies or any bus company," she said. "If we go somewhere I've all ready been there first. I want my people to get the full experience as if they were local and that goes for the restaurants, too."
TAKE THE TOUR
Lemaire's summer tour of Europe, Australia/New Zealand/Tahiti and the American West included dozens of stops. To see them all, visit the following links:
