Immersive learning in natural & social sciences, creative arts

Spend time at Green Oaks, and you'll notice things—both little and big—about the world around you.

For one of their required research projects at Green Oaks Term this spring, Liliana Coelho and her lab partner gave serious attention to the biggest thing around us: the night sky.

"We researched the constellations," Coelho said. "Ben Smolinski and I read the ancient stories about the constellations, and we asked the other students in the course to make up their own stories.

"We studied the significance of place, how stars have helped in navigation. Birds use stars, and people, too—the ancient Mayans, the ancient Greeks, the Underground Railroad. The night sky connects people to where they are."

Other students took note of the smallest details. Casey Stachelski and her lab partner studied animal tracks, which reveal among other things, the opossum's unique, tiny opposable thumb. In the middle of an interview—almost in mid-sentence—she stops talking about tracks to comment on little white fluffs in the wind on an early summer day.

"That's cottonwood," she says of the seed-bearing puffs. "It's really beautiful. It looks like it's snowing."

Each of the dozen students had to do three major projects during the ten-week program—two research-based projects in the natural and social sciences, conducted individually or with lab partners; and an individual project in the creative arts.

In-depth, interdisciplinary academic work in the context of a small, intentional community is the central feature of Green Oaks Term.

The program is held every other year at Green Oaks, Knox's 700-acre biological field station, located 19 miles from campus. Created more than 50 years ago on land previously used for farming and mining, Green Oaks now comprises restored prairie, forest and aquatic habitats, including the region's second-oldest prairie restoration project.

Stachelski's interview was interrupted a second time, by the sound of thunder in the distance.

A visitor remarks: "When you're studying at Green Oaks every day, you have to deal with the outdoors," expecting an early summer storm.

"Have to deal with the outdoors?" Stachelski replies. "You get to deal with the outdoors. I love the variable weather that we have every day. I love rainstorms. We had class in the rain, and we had class in hot-humid weather. There were a couple of days when we were inside for a lecture, but mostly we were outside almost every day."

The students in the course, along with two student teaching assistants and three faculty members, also traveled to natural and historic sites in Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin.

As part of the on-going prairie restoration, the students conducted the annual Prairie Burn earlier in the spring. They also took on service projects at Green Oaks, including construction of a log bridge over a creek on one of the trails. The program concluded with a picnic and barn dance.

Below, a student with his creative arts project in the forest; the barn dance on the final day of Green Oaks Term; students gather for a meal outside...