Student Participants
From beginning to end, students will gain valuable life lessons from this out-of-class educational experience. Students will learn about teamwork, leadership, planning, communication, history, engineering, social issues, our environment, and our region in a way that is just not possible in a traditional classroom. The communities that we pass through will also benefit, since we will be drawing attention to the historical heritage and natural beauty of a region marked by intensive industrial exploitation and subsequent industrial decline, where both heritage and beauty are too easily (and too often) overlooked. Finally, the trip will be an instructive lesson in student initiative, historical awareness and environmental preservation beyond the region whenever it is covered in the media and wherever it is discussed.
The trip presents a golden opportunity for LTU students to develop leadership skills, and they’ve risen energetically to the challenge. They’ve taken the lead in fundraising, identifying potential sponsors, designing and building the canoe and planning routes and itineraries. They’ve organized on-the-water practice exercises. A group of them completed Red Cross lifesaving training, while two went on a three-day canoeing trip down the Clarion River in Pennsylvania with a group of historical re-enactors, the Compagnie Franche de la Marine de la Riviere au Boeuf (the Compagnie LeBoeuf) (http://members.tripod.com/frenchmarine/), winning high praise from their hosts. Last summer, they fanned-out across southeast Michigan, northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania to scout the route: identifying campsites and explaining the project in communities along the way.
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