GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A Calvin University environmental professor usually brings her students to Lake Michigan for hands-on study of sand dunes.
This year, the dunes are coming to Calvin.
Deanna van Dijk, a professor of geology, geography, and environmental studies, had 1,250 tons of sand delivered to campus on Tuesday, Aug. 4.
It was dumped on the east side of campus, near the Prince Conference Center. It will be spread out in the shape of a dune on Wednesday before winds start shaping it.
“It’s very important that we have hands-on experiences, that we focus on doing science by investigating,” van Dijk, who is also program director for First-Year Research in Earth Sciences (FYRES), said in a statement.
In years past, she and her FYRES students made frequent trips to the sand dunes for research. Because of COVID-19, she had concerns about students traveling together to the shoreline for the hands-on work.
Van Dijk, who has studied sand dunes for nearly 20 years, started thinking about ways to reduce risks but still provide students with important research opportunities.
“Some ideas, you don’t know where they come from,” she said. “My mind went, ‘Well, we are trying to bring students to the dunes, but could we bring a dune to the students?’ It seemed like a really crazy idea, and I knew that to make that work it would be an awful lot of sand to place somewhere on campus.”
She said students will go by themselves to the Lake Michigan dunes at least once. But most of the research will be done on campus.
“We can do experiments that we can’t do on the real dunes, and we will be able to watch our research site - we can get out there more frequently,” van Dijk said.
“Creativity and problem solving is what we do in science.”
Read more on MLive:
Coronavirus outbreak at Muskegon prison increases to more than 150 inmates
Michigan reports 664 new coronavirus cases, 8 new deaths
Solar panels to save West Michigan city $354K in energy costs