Van Wickle Hall will soon debut a new outdoor learning space, bringing more rocks to campus than ever before.
Construction on the outdoor classroom broke ground in early June. While the classroom was originally slated to open by the first day of classes, members of the geology department are hopeful that the space will be ready for use this September.
“As we’ve been utilizing this location through the years, the one thing we recognize is that we’re teaching outside all the time,” John Wilson, the geology department’s lab coordinator, said. “So gosh, what if we had a space that we could actually teach in outside?”
For over a decade, the department has had hopes of bringing such an extension to Van Wickle’s south lawn.
While the lawn had been previously used to conduct geographic data classes, inspect muddy lab samples and host many a department barbecue, Wilson hopes the improvements to the space will bridge “the gap between the field experience and the classroom experience.”
“Originally, the material comes from outside,” he said. “So why don’t we learn about it outside?”
The space will be equipped with WiFi, screencasting capabilities and an abundance of outlets, the result of an informal student poll conducted by the department, according to David Sunderlin, the department head.
The space will also be equipped with a plethora of rocks.
“Every surface that you see is going to be, geologically, potentially a teaching tool,” Sunderlin said. “It’s really important to us that it’s beautiful, that it’s pedagogically useful for what we’re trying to do in our department and that it just becomes a space where people can explore some of the things that we talk about.”
Wilson echoed Sunderlin’s statement.
“You might come by one day and see students sitting on the steps,” Wilson said. “Not because they’re sitting on the steps enjoying a break from class – they’re actually analyzing the steps to see the layers in them or if there’s a structural feature that they can measure.”
The geology department prioritized sourcing native rocks for the design. Chalkboard slate came from a nearby quarry and the outside walls are a blend of local rock, mixing Allentown Formation dolomite gathered by students in an off-campus lot and stone once beneath Markle Parking Deck.
“We picked the coolest ones,” said Tess Boyler ‘25, a geology major who helped gather the Allentown Formation rock.
To Sunderlin, the reason behind using native stone is as important to him symbolically as it is literally.
“This is a teaching tool, these local rocks are what you’d find beneath Lafayette’s campus,” he said. “But it’s also that they haven’t been moved very far. A major carbon contributor is just the energy it takes to move rock a long distance.”
“As people say, ‘It’s dripping with less oil,’” Sunderlin continued.
While a majority of the space will be made of the native stones, the interior wall of the classroom will be lined with what Wilson calls the “‘wow’ rocks.”
“It’s going to be pieces of granite, it’s going to be pieces of basalt, it’s going to be pieces of limestone, it’s going to be pieces of gneiss,” he said. “Rocks from all over the world.”
Sunderlin described this interior wall as a modular system, allowing the slabs of rock to be swapped out for others or rearranged to help illustrate a particular lesson.
He emphasized that this built-in “geological geekiness” was all part of the plan.
“We could arrange them in the spectrum that marks some chemical change that we’re trying to teach, or geographic change, or something like that,” he said.
Geology major Rebecca Capone ‘27 is looking forward to the classroom’s completion.
“It’s just exciting to have another space for everyone to meet and be a community,” she said.
Sydney Putera ‘25, another geology major, agreed.
“Geology is just so hands-on,” Putera said. “Especially outside. It’s about time we have an outdoor space.”
