April 10, 2015 Travels along the Mississippi: A Minnesota Boy goes Downstream

 

Travels along the Mississippi: A Minnesota Boy goes Downstream

 

Richard Dunning, Faculty in Geology

 

Student engagement is a challenge for all teachers and a fundamental component of the learning process.  I began my 2011-2012 sabbatical with a desire to use the Mississippi River as a central focus around which to increase student engagement in my Environmental Geology class.  Environmental Geology is really about how geology affects people so the basic question of my project was to find out how many ways the Mississippi River affects us; as individuals, as residents of the Twin Cities and Minnesota, and as citizens of the U.S.  The answer is of course, a lot.  The primary activity of the project was to travel the length of the Mississippi and find out about the ways that the river affects the people that live within its wide sphere of influence.  In this brief presentation I want to share some of what I learned in those travels.