Classroom on the side of a mountain

It wasn’t far into the trip up the side of an Icelandic volcano when Jenn Mead knew for sure
her fourth-year field course was unlike any class she had taken before.

An Earth and environmental studies student at McMaster, Mead has recently returned from
the Nordic country, where she and a group of seven undergraduates spent 12 days
studying its unique geography and geology.

“I came out of it feeling like I had learned so much more than I could have if the course had
been spread out over a year and taught on campus,” she said.

The field course included visits to volcanoes and glaciers as well as the University of
Iceland.

A half-hour boat ride took the students to Vestmannaeyjar, an archipelago off Iceland’s
south coast. There the students learned about geothermal gradient, or the rate at which
temperature increases the deeper one probes into the Earth.

The students also visited the island of Heimaey, where they climbed the 200-metre-high
Eldfell volcano, which last erupted in 1973. The group gained a better understanding of the
heat still being produced by the volcano when the scraps of paper they tossed into it burst
into flames in mere seconds.

Nothing compared, however, to travelling up Eyjafjallajokull – the ice capped volcano that
made headlines in 2010 when it erupted, spewing dust clouds that disrupted air travel in
northern Europe for several weeks.

The group drove up the side of the volcano in a specially-equipped off-road vehicle.

At the top, amidst the steam still being released by the volcano, the group talked geology
in one of McMaster’s most exotic classroom settings.

“It’s so easy to grasp when its right in front of you,” said Mead. “It’s so much more
interesting than sitting in a classroom.”

It’s a sentiment that professor Carolyn Eyles, who teaches the course, has heard before.

“The best way to learn anything in the Earth sciences is to see it first-hand,” she said. It’s
not always easy to understand plate tectonics, but to stand at the border of the North
American and Eurasian plates [which runs through the middle of Iceland] is a phenomenal
learning experience.”

Eyles, who won a 3M Teaching Fellowship in 2009 for her innovative approach to teaching,
has led previous field courses to Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and the Canadian
Rockies.

Students in the course are marked on their field notes, a poster presentation and complete
an oral exam.

This year’s trip also included two McMaster graduate students and a number of students
from the University of Toronto.