The Block of each APU semester is suited for long, off-campus excursions when this suits the educational requirements of the course.
Such travel may require additional expense from students in the form of lab fees and travel expenses. In addition, such courses often introduce students to real-world logistical problems that professionals in the environmental science often incur “in the field.”
The Environmental Science Department uses travel courses to expand student learning and training opportunities beyond the many that exist locally.
In many cases, subjects require travel to communities and ecosystems not present in Alaska or during times when Alaska’s seasons make productive learning impossible.
Travel for a few days to a few weeks is often required for study within Alaska, due to the size of the state and the isolation of many of the locations involved.
Exploring the natural history of Alaska, students travel beyond Anchorage, camping and back-packing through southcentral Alaska to study animals, plants, and geology of the region.
Many of these courses involve travel far from Alaska or to other nations.
To study coastal ecosystems and tropical ecology, courses travel to locations such as the Bahamas, Hawaii, and the Galapagos Islands.
Whether or not a particular course is designated as a “travel” or “field” experience, our courses often involve experiences beyond the classroom.
A professional environmental scientist must rely on theory, empirical knowledge, and the experiences of others who’ve been in the field and laboratory to guide his or her inquisitive endeavor. Certainly, the classroom in the place to study this aspect of the sciences and this is not unimportant. But even before graduation and certainly after (graduate research or in a career position), it is important to rely on hands-on experience and past successes, and the mistakes made in the course of pursuing those successes, to guide the scientist in asking the correct research questions and applying the appropriate study designs and techniques to gain a reasonable chance of success in answering those questions. Faculty in the Department know this and ask students to have similar experiences, often at a much earlier stage in the students careers than in the careers of those same faculty. It is a richly rewarding approach and will lead to a stronger resume at graduation, whether in competition for a career position or further study at a different institution.