Every place is very unique and what I
like to do is I like to find that
uniqueness. Wisconsin has an amazing
post-glacial geological landscape. No
matter where you go you're gonna find
these opportunities so one of the
things that I introduced my students to
is interaction between humans and the
environment. We manipulate the
environment all the time, we have been
doing that for millennia. The question
is what kinds of manipulation do we
believe are right which, ones are wrong
and those survey interesting ethical
questions that we we need to settle and
the community provides lots of
opportunities for engagement because one
of the things that I'd like to introduce
the students is field research and
that's why I take them canoeing. The canoe
trip that we just did yesterday -- last
weekend -- it was an annual reunion I teach
a course in the Boundary Waters in July
every year and you always like to bring
the students together after we get back
to campus to kind of remember what we
learned to build community - when I take
my students into the Boundary Waters
we're there for a month out of
that month we're renewing and camping
out for a week and sometimes we get hot
weather sometimes we get rain but we
always get the most beautiful scenery we
get introduced to very interesting
people we get to meet lots of Native
Americans that welcomed us into their
reservations we get to see bears and
wolves, eagles, moose. They fall for it yep
I do too so you know then we just wish
to come back that's why we go out here
in Beloit as well and it's really
amazing when the students realize okay I
can totally see how important it is to actually
learn by doing, to learn from those
people that we study directly from them
then they get really excited and then
they don't want to come back.
