Our First Course in Hawaii

Our first pop-up course, held on the Big Island of Hawaii, was a success! We held two separate weeks of the "Explore Our Environment" course and 103 students joined us to study the geography, ecology, topography, and cultural aspects of Hawaii. Highlights of the course included hiking down into the crater of a volcano, identifying and then destroying invasive species in the rainforest, dissecting regurgitated contents from albatross stomachs and discovering plastics and other garbage, and learning about last year's eruption from locals who were in the path of the lava flows. We are currently evaluating the course and will be returning to Hawaii in 2023.

After the course was over, instructor Melanie Leathers gave students a pop quiz to see if they could pronounce some of the Hawaiian words they had encountered during the week. Check out the video below...how do you think they did?