MTSU students survive ‘SmokyMtnU’ back-country camping experiences

All nine Middle Tennessee State University undergraduate students survived their most strenuous and intensive aspect of the “SmokyMtnU” class they completed during the spring semester.

The nine, plus graduate student Lee Rumble of Nashville, Tennessee, and associate professor Ashley Morris spent one night of front-country camping and three nights in the back country as their week of finals experience as part of the four credit hour biology course.

The students participated in the upper-division biome analysis class called “Ecology and Management of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.” They also studied and performed research in the park during spring break.

The recent trip involved 40-pound backpacks, tents, sleeping bags and pads, hiking poles and boots, cooking gear and back-country food.

“We ate a lot of Mountain House meals,”Morris said of the food that can be cooked in a flash anywhere, anytime. “It’s freeze-dried. You add boiling water.”

With mentoring from Christine Hoyer, back-country management specialist for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Morris’s students tracked the “human impact on back-country (camp) sites doing the same assessment her team does,” Morris said.

The students also conducted a sound-mapping exercise and “everybody heard something different,” Morris said, adding that on the final night a back-country park ranger talked about his challenges that include search and rescue operations.

In groups of three, they planned a back-country trip using topographic maps — getting from point A to point B — and taking what they learned to implement it for a future trip, Morris said.

“Christine gave students parameters for starting and end points, number of travel days and weather forecast,” Morris said. “Students had to use map skills and knowledge gained over the course of the semester to determine trails, distance to travel in a single day, gear to pack and challenges to consider given terrain and forecast.”

“We all survived,” Morris added, laughing, referring to the total experience. “We were really nervous, but the students got a lot out of it. Elmon Gonzales, who grew up in Sevierville (Tennessee), said it was life-changing. He had never been hiking in the Smokies. It got him thinking about resource management and ecology.”

The group hiked about 15 miles total in the whole experience.

In addition to Gonzales, others making the trip included James Beckner and Infiniti Bristol of Kingsport, Cody Keck of New Tazewell, Haley Carter of Church Hill, Haven Poore of Thompson’s Station and Cyerrha Sengaroun, Bekkah Riley and Luke Torres of Murfreesboro.

Morris is leaving MTSU, heading to Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. She hopes Furman will continue the program and that a faculty member from MTSU will step up and lead the class.

MTSU has more than 300 combined undergraduate and graduate programs. Biology is one of 11 College of Basic and Applied Sciences departments.