The Barometer Online

Issue date: 4/17/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Contributed Photo The OSU Geography club travels to the Middle East during finals week of winter term and spring break. Club members examined sinkholes near the Dead Sea created by dropping water levels.

After 14 hours of flying, 18 Oregon State undergraduate and graduate students from the department of geosciences arrived in Tel-Aviv, Israel on March 19.

Traveling in an assigned tour bus, the group traveled all over Israel and Palestine. They stayed in hostels, usually for only two nights at each destination before packing up to head to the next city. They were hosted by different Israeli and Palestinian universities in the areas they traveled.

Each day, they would spend the morning with an expert in some area of science, with experts coming from topography, hydrology and geology. In the afternoon, they would spend more time with another expert in a different field of expertise in the Middle Eastern region.

Aaron Wolf, a professor in geosciences at Oregon State, traveled with the students as a guide along with two other faculty members. Wolf lived in Israel for 10 years and is a water conflict expert in the area. He brought along his knowledge to help the students learn more about the water conflicts in the area and how it relates to everything from religion to politics.

"We traveled through Israel and Palestine very extensively, bringing together the physical dimensions - mountains, rivers, etc. - to how it relates and plays a role in politics and religion of these lands," Wolf said. "It was a very rich experience."

The Geo Club plans international trips similar to this one every two years.

They travel to a different country and different region of the world each time.

Two years earlier, the group traveled to Spain, and two years before that, on the first ever trip, they traveled to South Africa.

The trips give the students real hands-on information about the places they have read and learned about.

"To hear and read about these places a lot and to go into the experience with background knowledge of the area as I did makes it just unbelievable to see for yourself," said Evan Miles, a graduate student at Oregon State in the water resources program. This was Miles' first trip to the Middle East, and he is already planning on going back again by himself.

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