STUDENTS TO SPEND CHRISTMAS BREAK IN PANAMA

December 3 , 2003

           Instead of heading home for the holidays, several Ferrum College students will be joining Dr. Byrd and Dr. Stogner on a trip to Bocas del Toro, Panama.   The group will be leaving on December 16 and will return on December 23. Three Ferrum seniors, Kristin Schoester, Ken Bradshaw, and Bryce Burnett, will be giving up a portion of their holiday break for the intensive Panama excursion. .

      When asked about the motivation for the trip, Dr. Stogner said, “It [the trip] is designed to survey the various habitats and facilities to see if we can use it as an alternate site for the tropical marine/ecology course that we already teach in the Virgin Islands.”

      Bradshaw remarks, “I think that this will be a learning experience for the 5 of us that are going .   We are all going to be assigned a different ecosystem and do a microstudy of the assigned area.  We will most likely learn a lot about the tropical region.”

      Schoester said of the upcoming trip, “I'm excited about the environment and ecosystems of Panama's coast and rainforests.”

      Ferrum College is a four-year, private, co-educational, liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Ferrum offers a choice of nationally recognized bachelor’s degree programs at a cost well below the national average for private colleges. For more information on Ferrum, visit www.ferrum.edu. # # #