COALITION FOR NATURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL FIELD TRIPS

Do you like field trips? Did field trips ever have an influence on your life? Do you ever want to share your field trip knowledge and experiences with others? The goal of the Coalition is to provide nature and environmental field trips to a large number of people.

Field trips are vital, irreplaceable, and inspirational educational experiences in the geological sciences. Geologists rank very high in field trips per capita. Field trips for most people are a special event and opportunity. We geologists can use this as a strength to promote greater interaction between society and geology and the environment.

This is not just kids stuff, nor is it just geology. A spread sheet is presented with three different types of audiences juxtaposed with four different types of field trips. The most ingenious is organized at a school, from where students, parents, and teachers, accompanied by knowledgeable guides and mentors provided by the Coalition, as a group, walk from the school talking about and examining their surroundings. Opportunities for pleasant mixing of these social groups are important. This type of field trip has been carried out by the authors numerous times, and surveys document the field trips to be very stimulating and effective. Planning is necessary, this trip is easy, and it may grow to reach a large population. With respect to the whole spread sheet of field trip types, experience of the authors demonstrates that communities contain a volunteer army of knowledgeable individuals dedicated to sharing nature and environmental field trips who willingly serve as guides and mentors on the field trips. They can be mobilized as a part of an efficient Coalition.

The provision of these diverse types of field trips to the selected audiences is the goal of the Coalition. We present an infrastructure design currently operational within which we carry out and promote Nature and Environmental Field Trips.