APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY ITALY FIELD CAMP: GEOLOGY, CULTURAL IMMERSION, AND LOGISTICS

The Appalachian State University (ASU) undergraduate field camp in Italy provides students with a unique geological experience, mapping in both contractional and extensional environments, as well as cultural immersion through direct interaction with Italian geology students. Keeping the program affordable is fundamental to the overall success of the course, and is contingent on collaboration with Italian universities and institutes. The first third of the program is based at the Osservatorio Geologico di Coldigioco, where ASU students stay with students from Penn State University, learn the Umbria-Marche stratigraphy, and complete an initial mapping project in a fold-and-thrust belt. The subsequent ten days in Poggiodomo, Italy, are the cultural cornerstone of the course, where ASU students live and work with Italian students from the University of Perugia. During this mapping project, they work in mixed Italian and ASU groups mapping at a scale of 1:10,000 in a 10 kilometer square area, which includes both thrust faults and associated folds, and high-angle normal faults. Over the course of this project students learn complex geology, gain an appreciation for differences between Italian and American geology programs, and both groups of students improve their language skills. The project culminates with each student producing a map and cross-section, and each group producing a poster summarizing the stratigraphic, structural, and tectonic significance of their mapping area. After a GSA style poster presentation, the ASU students have time off in Perugia, during which they are free to explore the city with their new Italian friends. The course concludes with a project mapping multiply deformed metamorphic rocks in the Alpi Apuane. ASU students stay at an agriturismo, which provides all meals and lodging a 20 minute drive from the field area, and they map in an area that is renowned for hiking trails and marble production. The logistics for the entire course were organized in close consultation with Italian colleagues who had prior experience staying at specific agriturismos that are in close proximity to field areas and are reasonably priced. This allowed ASU students to experience an affordable and authentic Italian cultural experience within the framework of a traditional geology field course.