Students who participated in Missouri Western’s Outdoor Semester 2006 participated in “The Rivers of Our Experience” on Nov. 30, a presentation showcasing the Outdoor Semester program and the unique experience the group shared.
The ten students displayed books, objects and artifacts they collected and equipment they used in the field, presented a slideshow of their journey, and read from journals they kept while following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark’s bicentennial journey.
“They will try to take you on just a bit of the journey they were on, and make in that way, an argument for this kind of education,” said Elizabeth Latosi-Sawin, professor of English at Missouri Western and one of the faculty members involved with Outdoor Semester. Sawin has been involved with Outdoor Semester since its first inception in 1995.
“Half of the semester’s learning experiences have to do with American Indian literature and culture,” Sawin said. “It’s not just a question of American European expansion into the Great Plains, but of the contact between that culture and the cultures that were already here for thousands of years.”
Sarah Auxier expressed her experience. “A new world has been presented to me. We got to see the world the way tribes see it, how they see what we’ve done, usually we only get to see one side of it” Auxier, a Missouri Western student and Outdoor Semester participant said of her journey.
Auxier went on the trip in hopes of interacting and bonding with fellow students and faculty on a different level.
“It was everything I had expected.” Auxier said.
Native American culture and literature has been a prevalent theme in many of the Outdoor Semesters of previous years, offering a variety of courses to aid students in their journey.
The students take geography to better understand the relationship between the land and the people, and to learn more about the climate and meteorology of the area.
The students also take Native American Literature, in which they read novels about the Native American experience, which allow them to better understand different points of view.
“The students read a novel, by James Welch called Fools Crow, which deals with Blackfeet culture,” Sawin said. “At the end of the 19th century, when white culture was starting to come up the river and expand into the fur trade, students understand what Blackfeet culture was like.”
“The students, through the books they read, learn something about oral tradition and different narrative points of view,” Sawin said. “The novels all have bearing on the history of the relationship between American society and indigenous peoples.”
By applying geography to their reading, the students travel in the landscapes of the literature they are reading, Sawin said.
“As an undergraduate, I wish I had the opportunity to enter the landscape of any novel I was reading.”
Outdoor education is a significant part of the program, as students learn to take care of themselves in wilderness settings, by camping, hiking and preparing meals. The students also pursue several outdoor activities such as canoeing, white water rafting and rock climbing.
Students take English 108 to learn to gather research and prepare journals while they are in the field.
“They have also seen, in this particular outdoor semester, some pretty extraordinary sights,” Sawin said of the double rainbow the group saw and their spotting of the Northern Lights in Montana.
Sawin believes the Outdoor Semester experience further extends what is learned in the classroom.
Megan Schildknecht, an art major at Missouri Western who participated in Outdoor Semester said, “Learning in the field is more fun.”
Schildknecht had always expressed a love for the outdoors, and was accompanied on the trip by her husband.
“My husband thought it would be fun, so he got me started on the idea. I love the outdoors but I needed someone to say, ‘do it’,” she said.
In addition to gaining knowledge and a new respect for the language, art and deep respect for nature that Native tribes have, Schildknecht also learned about teamwork.
“I learned about group dynamics, and how everyone has their own place and how those different places fit together,” she said.
“You start to get a sense of how huge our country is, and what challenges the pioneers faced,” Sawin said. “By the time we’re finished, they understand the complexities of history because we start to understand things from multiple points of view.”
Since Outdoor Semester began in 1995, students have hiked the Badlands, rafted the Rio Grande, observed powwows and stood in the middle of a bison herd.
“Our students have been to Wounded Knee, to Pinewood Reservation. It’s historical, it’s cultural, and it’s physical. It’s like all systems are going, we’re trying to understand the whole package,” Sawin said.
“The outdoor experience is integral to the learning that takes place in the classroom,” Sawin said. “Study away experiences don’t have to just be across oceans.”