By Haley Tenore

Spring and summer breaks often are a chance to unwind, but students in two recent field courses at Virginia Commonwealth University were instead winding their way with purpose through Southern landscapes.

Part of VCU’s environmental studies program, the courses delivered experiential learning – and a dose of roughing-it-in-the-wild sensibility. But they also highlighted a timely purpose and a generational need. And as VCU’s new School of Life Sciences and Sustainability kicks off, the courses also embody the current and future impact of student engagement in those disciplines.

Effective July 1, the new school will bring together VCU Life Sciences and the Department of Biology in the College of Humanities and Sciences. It will administer and oversee biological, environmental and sustainability sciences academic programming, research and other relevant initiatives at VCU.

Relevance – for his students and his specialty – is key to James Vonesh, Ph.D., who took students in his Buffalo National River seminar to Arkansas during their spring break in mid-March. Vonesh is a professor and assistant director in the Center for Environmental Studies, a unit of VCU Life Sciences, and is Southeast chapter president of the River Management Society. The society’s River Studies and Leadership Certificate program aims to develop new talent in the field.

“About 15 years ago, they were looking around and were like, ‘Well, we’re a bunch of gray-haired folks – where’s the young generation?’” Vonesh said. “We needed to create a pipeline to attract people into these kinds of careers, to ensure that we are training the next generation of river stewards. … This is even more vital given the moment of history we are in and the concern for our public lands.”

Over in the low country of South Carolina at the same time, VCU students in Wilderness and Wildlife, a course taught by avian ecologists Lesley Bulluck, Ph.D., and Dan Albrecht-Malinger, were frequently looking up.

Bulluck, an associate professor in the Center for Environmental Studies, said a highlight of the trip was the diverse range of birds: She and her students saw 92 species during the five-day adventure, which included stops at Edisto Island State Park, Congaree National Park and the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge. The objective of the course was to combine student learning in three distinct areas: natural history, human history and outdoor adventure. 

Before embarking on the trip students read about the species and ecological processes shaping the ecosystems they would be in: coastal marsh, bottomland hardwood forests and longleaf pine savannas. They also read about the rich, and sometimes tragic, human history of these places. On the final night of camping together, the group reflected on the term resilience – in both the ecosystems and the people of the region.

“When you’re camping in those ecosystems, it’s a much more powerful and meaningful experience ecologically,” Bulluck said.

Indeed, for second-year student Jasmine Cuellar, the South Carolina trip was a chance to explore a passion in a new phase of life. The 31-year-old had worked in the restaurant industry for years before entering VCU, where she is majoring in environmental studies and minoring in Spanish.

Cuellar has long had a love of nature and animals, but “I’ve always told myself I didn’t like camping that much,” she said. On the trip, though, she learned that “I think it’s just like getting through that threshold of discomfort -- of being outside, not having access to a bathroom or not having cell service.”

And enduring some torrential rain. But the payoff was worth it.

“One night after the sun had gone down, we all heard a bird called the whippoorwill. It has a very distinct call. It was just special, because I had never heard one,” Cuellar said. “And it was so quiet, and we all heard it. It was very memorable.”

All three of the VCU professors who led the field studies noted that while classroom and Richmond-area resources are powerful elements of environmental sciences coursework, the opportunity for students to go farther off campus – and deeper into nature – can have lasting impacts.

VCU was the first university east of the Mississippi River to introduce the River Studies and Leadership certificate program, which is offered at 14 colleges nationwide. Vonesh’s trip to the Buffalo National River – it is one of the few remaining undammed rivers in the Lower 48 states – included students and faculty from VCU as well as schools in Oklahoma and Tennessee, plus river professionals from a number of states.

The trip was a highlight of the first-ever hybrid online/field seminar course across three river certificate schools. The schools initially learned together virtually, then came together in the field during spring break – and then worked together virtually afterward to analyze their data, which helped them compare the health of the Buffalo with rivers in their home regions. Their work resulted in student posters that were presented at the national RMS symposium in Oregon, as well as at VCU Rice Rivers Center and undergraduate research symposiums.

Of course, the impact of such experiences can apply to life skills, too.

“We traveled along the river for three days, two nights, and along the way, we developed our outdoor leadership skills,” Vonesh said of the trip. “We practiced canoeing, rafting, camping, and we also learned a little bit about river safety, which is a fundamental skill for the certificate,” whose students often have interest in working with federal agencies, nonprofits and park services.

Back in South Carolina, the trip represented multiple achievements for Kay Breland. In addition to being an environmental studies student, she is a trip leader and student manager in VCU’s Outdoor Adventure Program. She spent two semesters planning the group’s expedition, including locations, meal plans and necessary gear. At the end of each day, Kay and the other trip leader Emma Havens, also facilitated student reflection on the challenges and highlights of each day.

“It is such a privilege to be able to ... learn in those spaces,” she said of nature becoming a classroom. “It was cool to be a part of a team of environmental studies faculty who were mentoring me academically, as well as staff at the Outdoor Adventure Program – all working together on this project that I had started and we all believed in.”

Bulluck added that students get to learn about one another in sometimes unexpected ways when doing field work.

“When you camp for five days with a group of people, you get to know them well,” she said. “We were typically in campgrounds with bathrooms. But one night we canoed 9 miles down South Cedar Creek in Congaree National Park. We camped in the middle of nowhere and then canoed another 9 miles down the Congaree River the next day. So, having that backcountry experience was special for students who had never camped before. … That does lead to a lot of team building.”