Off-Campus: Italy
The three-week field studies abroad course, The Geology of Italy, was offered for the first time in summer 2010 for general education science credit and also for upper-level credit as a special topics course in geology. Italy provides a wealth of geologic diversity and a long history of planning around natural disasters; therefore, instruction focused on the tectonics of Italy, the influence of seismic activity on construction and infrastructure, the formation of volcanic arc complexes, and the history of earthquake and volcanic events. The students visited the buried city of Pompeii, took day hikes to Mt. Vesuvius and Mt. Etna, the Aeolian Island chain, explored earthquake remnants, learned about Italian approaches to natural hazard mitigation and remediation, and examined sediment transport and coastal geomorphology along Ustica Island.