Academic Outcomes

Course Goal: As a Capstone course, ERS410 will provide authentic professional experiences by drawing together the interdisciplinary content and skills of the Earth and Climate Sciences (ECS) undergraduate program during travel and symposia.

Instructional Objectives

During ERS410, students will:

  • Collect published literature related to an aspect of the coupled natural/human system to be encountered during travel.
  • Identify unresolved problems and knowledge gaps based on literature review.
  • Propose new questions and hypotheses related to identified problems.
  • Design data collection activities based on current best practices and techniques.
  • Present, debate, and revise ideas as teams with an audience of professional Earth and climate scientists.
  • Evaluate and revise travel plans, logistics, and safety protocols as a group.
  • Set up field experiments, collect data, and troubleshoot equipment problems.
  • Manage team and group communication during travel, including remote locations.
Professor showing rock outcrop to a group of students on a mountain.
Three students practicing rope tying.
A group of students with scientific equipment posing on top of snow-covered mountains.

Skills Aquired

  • Global impact/ local relevance research
  • Proposal development
  • Science planning and logistics
  • Risk assessment and mitigation
  • Safety
  • Group dynamics and collaboration
  • Field based and remote observations
  • Data science and analysis
  • Cultural knowledge
  • Science communication

Student Learning Outcomes

We will work on the development of a capstone project through the spring semester and during the travel portion of the course. Your team will have wide latitude to decide on the topic of your project – it could be a research-based project that collects and analyzes new data as part of novel inquiry, a research-based project that utilizes existing datasets, a literature review and meta-analysis that answers a fundamental question in the region, or some other innovative idea related to the coupled human-natural system in the region that your team develops in consultation with the instructors. The schedule and grading descriptions below provide details on the timeline and deliverables of the capstone project. After completing the capstone project and ERS410, students will be able to:

  • Synthesize existing Earth and climate science content knowledge and state-of-the-art observations to construct an evidence-supported argument.
  • Function competently in authentic Earth and climate science professional settings, including team collaboration, laboratory, fieldwork, and symposia.
  • Communicate Earth and climate science knowledge effectively in poster and oral formats.