����Vlog

“So, it was very random that last fall I ran into Dr. Harry Jol from the geography department in a conference room and he mentioned a research project in the Philippines that he thought I might be interested in,” Raymond says.

“I did not have experience with the specific technology the project would use, nor had I done field data collection. He knew that, but said there would be instrument training, adding that I did have other important skills that go into being part of a research team,” Raymond says.

“Of course, I said yes!”

Like so many other Blugolds, Raymond seized the chance to see a whole new part of the world while building his scientific and technological knowledge base through an International Fellows Program research grant, learning in ways that simply cannot be replicated in a classroom.

Winterim on the Philippine coast

Raymond became one of three Blugold students to travel with Jol to the coastal plains of Northern Samar, Philippines, where they joined a team of four Southeast Asian researchers. The goal was to use ground-penetrating radar to offer insight on how the coastal history of large-scale tectonic events has shaped the coastal landscape of the country.

The team members were:

• Dr. Harry Jol, professor of geography at UW-Eau Claire.
• Grace McDonnell, senior geospatial analysis and technology and biology double major at UW-Eau Claire; hometown: Olivia, Minnesota.
• Ella Oestreicher, senior ecology and environmental biology major and geography minor at UW-Eau Claire; hometown: Hortonville.
• Danny Raymond, environmental geography major at UW-Eau Claire; hometown: Excelsior, Minnesota.
• The local team included graduate students, research associates and faculty from Nanyang Technological University Coastal Lab in Singapore, one researcher from the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute and one faculty member from Mindanao State University in Naawan, Philippines.

“Our mission was to image some of the coastline to better understand large-scale weather and tectonic events that impact this eastern side of the Philippines,” Jol says. “T���se events can be anything from typhoons to tectonic events like earthquakes and associated tsunamis.”

Jol says this landscape is very similar to the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., where he and past students have done similar work for more than a decade.

“We’ve mapped out eight earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest and the earthquakes have been shown to drop the shoreline by at least a meter in places, resulting in hundreds of meters of erosion,” Jol says.

The Blugold team had about 15 days total of fieldwork, data collection and data processing. Once the analysis by the Blugold students is completed, it will be shared with the international partners to take next steps.

“T��� is the main collaborating agency,” Jol says, explaining that the government of Singapore has much at stake in better understanding these systems.

“T��� 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed an estimated quarter million people in the region — something must be done. This kind of work will inform decisions in areas like shoreline development, evacuation routes and other protocols.”

Student outcomes prioritized in offering international research

For Jol, whose voluminous international field research record with students speaks for itself, the objective is always to give this unique experience to as many students as possible.

This Philippines project, for instance, had a team of three students with varying backgrounds in geographic and other studies, none of whom had previous experience with GPR before the trip. Jol says that makes the work even more exciting from a teaching perspective.

“Ella, Grace and Danny are three very different types of students, but in the end they will all have had the very rich experience of collaborating with an international team, as well as learning new field collection and analysis skills and presenting their findings at CERCA this spring,” Jol says, referring to UW-Eau Claire’s annual Celebration of Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.

For Oestreicher, the Philippines research was a welcome opportunity to conduct in-depth research in her minor of geography and push herself into doing something totally new.

“I wanted to immerse myself in some sort of project where I could utilize the skills that I've learned from the classes I've been studying for these past four years,” Oestreicher says.

“This project provided a great opportunity to go out of my comfort zone because while I've taken courses in geography, I had not done this level of work with it,” she says.

All expenses for the students were covered for this immersion, thanks to the International Fellows Program through the Intercultural Immersion Office at UW-Eau Claire.

“That’s right, Harry’s Philippines research was 100% funded through the IFP program, with zero cost to the students beyond their application fee,” says Dr. Jeff DeGrave, intercultural immersions coordinator and senior lecturer of geography.

“On this grant, it was the students who wrote the proposal, which is not typical,” DeGrave says, noting one more layer of experience this team of students gained.

Like Oestreicher, McDonnell knew the Philippines project could add one more geography specialty to her research experience. As a geospatial technology and analysis major, she had previously focused on topics of sustainability and agricultural soil mapping, so this GPR work would add a new emphasis.

“T��� research I had done in the past was more computational modelling in nature, not fieldwork,” McDonnell says. “Ella, Danny and I had a test day with the GPR unit over in Dunn County, so we had some basic familiarity with the radar before leaving the country.”

The overall experience is something McDonnell says was immeasurably enriching.

“I can’t even describe it well, it was just so incredible,” McDonnell says. “Working with international experts and having the chance to see how geography studies differ at institutions in other countries was enlightening. They’re all just smart, lovely people I was grateful to meet.”

Raymond reiterated his gratitude for the chance meeting with Jol last fall when he learned about the Philippines project.