Turning conservation area into a living lab for students an annual summer tradition for associate professor

For the 16^th year, Maureen Padden will spend summer’s end with students in the Dundas Valley Conservation Area.

Padden, an associate professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society, teaches a third-year environmental field camp course that turns the conservation area’s 1,200 hectares of forests, meadows and streams into a living lab.

Over 10 days in late August, 30 science students will use laser rangefinders, spectrophotometers, flow meters, multimeters, GPS units and other tools of the trade to measure stream discharge, conduct soil, tree and vegetation surveys and map the area. Students will also spend time back at Mac and in the lab analyzing their field samples.

The three-unit course offers students a preview of future careers in environmental science, says Padden. “With their degree, students can work in the field, in a lab or in an office or any combination of the three. I get the best of all those worlds as a faculty member – I’m incredibly lucky.”

Padden’s camp is one of three experiential learning courses offered every year by the School just before the start of the Fall term – there’s also a week-long urban field camp in downtown Toronto and an eight-day field camp in Northern Ontario.

Padden also runs the Introduction to Field Methods in Earth Sciences course at the end of the winter term. First-year students head up to cottage country, with overnight stays at a resort. Costs are offset thanks to a gift from alumni Keith and Traci MacDonald. While the weather and temperatures at that time of year are far more unpredictable than the end-of-summer camp, Padden says students don’t seem to mind. “The worse the conditions, the bigger the bragging rights.”

The courses are important because fieldwork is at the heart of environmental science research, says Padden. For many students it’s their first time working in the field collecting samples and then doing analysis in the lab.

And for some students, it’s their first extended stay in the great outdoors, spending full days in a forest and wading into a creek.

“The teaching assistants and I make a point of high-fiving those students. It’s brave to put yourself in a new learning environment where you don’t know what to do or what to expect. They’re proud of themselves at the end of the course and rightfully so. They’re always surprised to find the forest so peaceful and calming and can’t believe that much nature is so close to campus.”

The intensive and immersive camps supercharge learning, says Padden. “Everyone’s together for eight hours a day, 10 days in a row, rain or shine. I really get to know the students and they get to know each other. We’re all focused solely on this one course. Most students say they learn more and learn faster in field courses than in traditional lectures. Field courses are intense yet really satisfying for students – they’re also among the most rewarding courses I get to teach. You get to see students learn new skills, gain confidence and bond as a cohort in real time. There’s nothing better than that.”

Padden says she routinely hears back from freshly minted grads who credit the field camps with helping them stand out in job interviews and giving them a head start in their careers.

“It’s so satisfying to know that students are directly connecting what they’ve learned and experienced at McMaster with their careers.” 

With input from an all-star team of TAs, Padden built and launched the field course in 2009, a year after joining McMaster from the University of Calgary where she taught her first field courses.

In creating the course at McMaster, she also drew on her experiences as a student at the University of Waterloo and ETH Zurich in Switzerland where she did fieldwork across Canada and around the world, including the Arctic, the Swiss and Italian Alps, Sardinia, Southern France, Portugal and Germany.

Padden also credits the expertise of a freshwater ecologist from the Hamilton Conservation Authority and a Royal Botanical Gardens wildflower specialist who were involved with early iterations of the camp.

The field camp was suspended in 2020 because of COVID-19 but resumed the following year. The added precautions were challenging yet well worth the extra effort, says Padden. “For many students, it was the first time they were together in person with their peers in more than a year. It was so gratifying to see them revel in the social aspect of the field course.”

Keeping students safe is job one when it comes to field camps, says Padden. That requires lots of checklists, mandatory dress codes (long pants tucked into socks), sunscreen, bug spray, end of day tick checks and some gentle persuasion.

“There aren’t always bathrooms nearby when you’re out in the field so some students are tempted to not drink enough water which puts them at serious risk of dehydration.” Padden encourages students to get over their aversion to outdoor biobreaks

Padden also keeps an eye on students who are burning the candle at both ends. She advises students to put their part-time jobs on hold and scale back practices if they’re varsity athletes. Field camp’s also not a good time to try an extreme diet or workout regime.

“Get a good night’s sleep, wear proper clothing, eat right and stay hydrated – those are the keys to safe and successful fieldwork.”

Learner-centred education, with a focus on innovative and experiential teaching and learning practices and the development of critical thinking and foundational skills, is one of the four institutional priorities in McMaster’s five-year Bolder Together strategic plan.

“We’ve been doing that for years and years in the School of Earth, Environment & Society,” says Padden. “Our field camp courses check all those boxes.”