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Honors Students Travel to Panama

UWF Unmanned Aerial Systems Team Soars High

UWF Students Getting their Hands on History

Honors Students Travel to Panama
By Megan Tyson, University Marketing Communications

Horseback riding, exploring bat caves, snorkeling the coral reef, visiting indigenous tribes and zip-lining in Panama, 11 University of West Florida students, led by Klaus Meyer-Arendt, chair of Environmental Studies, received the cultural experience of a lifetime mixing these opportunities with their recent Honors seminar. Hosted by the university’s Honors program, the seminar combines an interdisciplinary focus with a vision to integrate content that fosters creative and innovative critical thinking.

The two-week excursion to Panama gave students from a variety of majors the opportunity to explore another culture and also hear about life first-hand from UWF alumnus Don King, BS Marine Biology, ’81, founder of the non-profit organization Soluciones Biotecnologicas Tropicales (SBT). The organization develops biotechnical solutions for issues in the province of Bocas del Toro, Panama and provides education and training, as well as environmental awareness, for local tribes.

“Students in the Honors program report that the international seminars are life-changing opportunities,” said Greg Lanier, director of the Honors program. “Nearly all students who have participated have said they would go back if they could and learn more.”

The UWF students spent one week in Bocas del Toro investigating social and environmental issues, ascended into the Chiriquí Highlands for three nights in Boquete and spent three nights in Panama City, where they toured the Panama Canal. Students also had the opportunity to visit a natural hot spring, take wild-life tours and had days in which they explored on their own.

“They definitely were an outgoing and dynamic group that wanted to do something new every day,” said Meyer-Arendt. “I wanted to expose them to those three corners of Panama, the city and the canal, the coastal areas and the mountains. It was a great little adventure.”

To conclude the seminar, the students presented research projects derived from various aspects of the trip to Panama. Each student had the opportunity to show her perspective on the trip and the topics and issues she researched. Topics included issues from ecotourism, cultural ecology and the nutrition of Panama to research about certain cultural places the group visited. Emerging themselves in the culture and history of Panama, it was apparent that each student came away from the seminar with their own experience.

“With my major being social work, I realized how little social services are available in that country, and yet those services are necessary to educate and help those people about how their lives can be,” said Alicia Berta, sophomore at UWF. “It just reinforces my decision to go into this major and that decision was made to help people.”

Charity Vander Wall, a freshman anthropology major, is already working with King to start a program at UWF to aide his organization. Hoping to attract volunteers through the Honors program and eventually the whole university, Vander Wall wants to find volunteers to conduct help with fundraising and research efforts.

“This trip gave me new ambition to start the project at UWF to help out SBT and a lot of personal insight and discoveries,” said Vander Wall. “I love traveling and I find that I learn more about myself when I am in a totally new environment than I ever could have back home.”

For more information, contact Meyer-Arendt at (850) 474-2792 or e-mail kjma@uwf.edu. To find out more about the Honors program, visit uwf.edu/honors. To find out more about SBT, visit solareef.com/index.php.

UWF Unmanned Aerial Systems Team Soars High
By Megan Tyson, University Marketing Communications

Awing the judges, the University of West Florida Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) team has placed fourth out of 18 colleges and universities during a competition hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), the world’s largest non-profit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems community.

Reaching their goal of placing in the top five and winning $3,800 in prize money, the UWF two-man team of juniors Neil Edmonston, electrical engineering major and Eric Becker, dual electrical and computer engineering major, outperformed larger teams of seniors, graduate students and doctoral students. Edmonston and Becker, who did all of the work without any outside help, impressed Department of Defense judges and received numerous comments about future job opportunities.

The primary objectives of the competition were for each team to build an unmanned aircraft to fly autonomous, navigate a specified course, use onboard sensors to locate and assess a series of man-made objects on the ground prior to returning to the launch point for landing. North Carolina State University, the University of Manitoba (Canada), Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Texas were among the 18 schools that participated in the competition.

“I was very proud to watch the UWF team raise the bar of professionalism at an international competition like this,” said David Algeo, UWF robotics laboratory manager. “They have accomplished their goals, and to have employers bombard them with job offers inspires the students to work ever harder to achieve even greater things.”

Many UWF students gain potential career experience through the electrical and computer engineering department’s robotics laboratory, which has produced national award-winning teams including the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Team and the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Aircraft Team. Students gain skills designing and building robots and have numerous opportunities to compete side-by-side with students from other top-ranked colleges from around the United States. Students involved in the team have access to advanced equipment through the engineering department and have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and network with potential businesses looking to hire tomorrow’s engineers.

For more information, contact Algeo at (850) 857-6411 or e-mail dalgeo@uwf.edu.

UWF Students Getting their Hands on History
By Megan Tyson, University Marketing Communications

On land or underwater, the University of West Florida is making sure that its Anthropology and Archaeology students are getting hands-on experience participating in summer maritime and terrestrial field schools. Considered the “heart” of the archaeology program, the field schools are offered each summer term, also with an option for undergraduate students to combine maritime and terrestrial field schools.

“I was told that if I wanted to do any archaeology in the Southeast, that the best place to get the experience was at UWF,” said Jessica Clover, senior at the University of Central Florida and UWF terrestrial field school student.

Excavating by the Barkley House in Pensacola, one of the oldest masonry residences in Florida, the UWF terrestrial field school is working to preserve and analyze evidence of the former kitchen and cook’s house. Students are receiving the opportunity to work on this project before the Florida Historical Preservation rebuilds the structures on their former foundations.

“We really believe that the hands-on experience is what allows students to become real archaeologists,” said Elizabeth Benchley, director of the UWF Archaeology Institute. “It’s an essential part of an undergraduate curriculum and students get a chance to see like an archaeologist and read the dirt.”

Giving students the opportunity to learn the basic skills of archaeological excavation and field laboratory methods, archaeologists and graduate students are on site full time to teach and assist undergraduate students. From handling a survey instrument to excavating units or organizing and tracking recovered material, terrestrial and maritime students work constantly Monday through Friday from late-May to mid-August.

“Our maritime field school has grown and expanded in the past few years,” said Greg Cook, UWF research associate and maritime archaeologist. “We really try to train people to do underwater archeology and dive safely and become underwater scientists, while also getting work done on the 1559 shipwreck.”

Located on a barge in Pensacola bay, the maritime field school sits above the remnants of a 450-year-old shipwreck, one of Tristán de Luna’s ships from his 1559 Pensacola colonization fleet. Discovered by two UWF students in 2006, archaeologists and students continue to excavate the site and are finding new materials every day.

“We get to work on one of the most significant sites that America has to offer right now,” said Tiffany Goldhamer, graduate student. “I feel very lucky to get the opportunity to be a part of a program that is very big on involving the public in archaeology.”

Diving down in groups of three, surveying a one meter by one meter area, each student has a key role, whether it’s measuring line levels or hand fanning sediments, they alternate between two teams and share information to make sure materials get properly tracked.

“We’re starting to get past some of the ballast and yesterday we started to feel pieces of wood,” said Brian Durnan, undergraduate student. “It’s exciting because that could be the mast or another part of the ship. To be able to touch history is indescribable.”

For more information, contact Benchley at (850) 474-3015 or e-mail ebenchle@uwf.edu or Cook at (850) 474-3015 or e-mail gcook1@uwf.edu. To find out more about UWF Anthropology and Archaeology, visit uwf.edu/anthropology. To read project journals about the maritime field school, visit uri.edu/mua.