Bus trip hardly qualifies as a break
| |
Photo by Tom Campbell
The ANSC 393 course
gives Purdue students a chance to experience different sections
of the American landscape. Here, Molly Kepler photographs the
sunrise at Dauphin Island, Ala. |
42 ag students traverse 9 states on 3,056-mile
trip
By Tom Campbell
As a spring break destination, the Maschhoff Pork
Farm and Feed Mill in Carlyle, Ill., certainly is no Cancun, Padre Island
or Daytona Beach.
But that's where a busload of 42 Purdue University agriculture
students and three faculty members were on March 15, the first stop
on the first leg of a 3,056-mile spring break odyssey some would call
the most interesting week of their entire college careers.
"This is a great opportunity to learn about
internships, summer jobs, even careers," says Craig Sappington,
a junior from Wheeling, Ill. "There's no way we would learn about
things like this if we were back on campus."
Animal sciences professors Mark Russell and Ron Lemenager developed
the course, designated ANSC 393, Animal Industry Travel Course, in 1988.
Each spring break since then, a group of students and faculty volunteers
has headed off on an adventure to see as much of the world as you can
see from a bus in seven days.
For the students, the tour is equal parts learning, networking and
student bonding, with a little mischievous fun thrown in.
"ANSC 393 was by far my favorite class I took at Purdue,"
says Kim Hamilton, a December 1999 graduate who participated in the
southern tour in 1998, where she was first exposed to aquaculture during
a stop at Auburn University in Alabama.
"You have to do some coursework in classrooms on campus,"
Hamilton says, "but there is so much crammed into that seven-day
travel program. It's really great, it gets you thinking about the reality
of the outside world and not just about campus life."
This spring, Hamilton, now a marine biologist, hosted a tour stop at
Dauphin Island, Ala., the southernmost and wettest stop on the tour.
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