This course is the outgrowth of the Spring 2001 course in which students traveled to Costa Rica over Spring Break. This year the course was titled: "The Geology of Oceanic Volcanic Islands". Originally, we were scheduled to visit the Canary Islands but logistical foul-ups by our British travel agency about a month before we were to leave made that trip impossible. Quickly changing gears, I made the decision to take the group to Hawai'i, a place I know fairly well from previous field and research trips. Fortunately, logistical arrangements are easily made in the islands because tourism is such a major part of the economy.

As a component of the course, each student received a volcanic island group on which they created a Power Point presentation that they gave to the class. Over Spring Break, the class traveled to the Big Island of Hawai'i  to examine the formation and destruction of an oceanic volcanic island. Another component of the course is to have each student create a web page about their experiences in the course. Clicking on the students' names in the table below will direct you to the fruits of their efforts. We hope you will enjoy our adventures. All of us certainly did!

We would like to thank Dean Robert Bauslaugh for his help in making this trip happen. We also wish to thank Sarah Dergarabedian, Linda Epperson, and Deborah Hall in the Business Office who helped manage the financial matters. I would like to thank Heath Overton, who kept the accounting straight during the trip and Heidi Galloway who transcribed my hand-written field journal to a MS Word format.