USU students road trip in Utah for credit
Travel around the beautiful state of Utah, visit historical sites and experience three Tony Award-winning Shakespearian performances – or sit in a classroom admiring pictures in a textbook. Both methods offer Utah State University students three humanities credits.
With the growing demand for more University Studies courses to be offered during the coming summer semester, the Provost’s Office has created an intensive six- day, post-summer session Breadth Humanities course unlike any other humanities course ever offered at USU.
Students who take this six-day course will embark on a road trip to southern Utah, where they will visit petroglyphs in Parowan, the Shakespearian Festival in Cedar City and a Japanese-American internment camp near Delta. Course instructor Mary Heers said this is her idea of the best possible educational experience.
Heers, who taught at Preston School High for 16 years, considers herself an old pro at this sort of excursion.
For years she said she loaded her high-school students onto a yellow school bus and led them on a trip to the Shakespearian Festival.
When the Provost’s Office approached her about teaching this course, she was happy to accept.
“They didn’t have to ask me twice to do this,” she said.
In order for students to receive three credits for this southwestern-Utah experience, they will be required to attend class discussions and seminars for 45 minutes a day and keep a journal on their experience.
They will be required to read a handful of books, all of which are intended to enrich their experience, she said.
One of the mandatory books is “When the Emperor Was Divine,” a fictionalized novel about a Japanese-American family that was forced to live in a Utah enemy alien camp during World War II.
Students will then visit Topaz, the internment camp referred to in the novel.
The group will also prepare a slide show presentation on the visit to Topaz that will be shared at “Connections” in the fall.
The students will write a final four- to-five-page paper on one of three themes focused on during the week.
Melissa Bowles, who will be team teaching the course with Heers, said she hopes the students who participate in the experience will get a good introduction to and an interest in Utah literature and culture.
The “Road Scholar Trip,” as Heers refers to the course, will take place Aug. 8-13 and will have a class fee of at least $150 to cover the prices of housing, food and admission to enrichment activities.
Gary Straquadine, associate vice provost at USU, said this course was designed to sandwich in a one-week workshop geared toward out-of-state students who are crunching to get 60 credits to be eligible to receive in-state tuition.
The Provost’s Office supports and endorses all of Heers’ ideas and efforts and is currently arranging additional funding to lower the price of the course to make it more appealing to students.
Straquadine said he is confident that the course will be beneficial and that Heers will be an important asset to students.
“Mary is exactly the right person to head this up,” he said.
Interested students can contact Mary Heers at mheers@cc.usu.edu or Melissa Bowles at mbowles@english.usu.edu for additional information.
-jhrash@cc.usu.edu