More than 92 percent of Drexel’s undergraduates participate in the Drexel Co-op program — a signature model of education that balances classroom theory with job experience within a buzzing network of more than 1,500 co-op employers in 38 countries. What does a Drexel co-op look like? In this regular feature, we ask a student fresh off a recent co-op to show us.
Photo by Jeff Fusco
1. Hiking Boots
2. Rocks
3. Gas Mask
My second co-op included a month of field work at Mount Sinabung, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, with a team led by Dr. Loÿc Vanderkluysen, a volcanologist in the Department of Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science. Our goal was to test the use of modern technology, like drones and cameras, in volcanology, a field that has historically used collecting methods that date as far back as the 1800s. Our team evaluated the possible use of drones to collect time-of-eruption ash samples from volcanoes. We also collected remote photographs of gas coming from the volcano to better understand the rate at which it is releasing gas.
This was a life-changing experience for me. I had never spent so long living abroad nor even been to Asia. I got to meet people different from myself, and I loved it. It’s made me want to travel more. It cemented my love for geology. As someone who loves science, but also loves art and looking at the world through a creative lens, geology is a beautiful melding of so many different concentrations, thoughts, ideas and disciplines. It was a great thing for me to be able to merge all these together in one co-op.
These are some rocks I collected. One is pumice from near Mount Sinabung that originated from Toba, a volcano many kilometers away. And these are pieces of sulphur from the Ijen volcano complex, which supports a centuries-old sulphur mining industry. My gas mask was mandatory for field work around Ijen — the particles from the ash plume are dangerous to breathe. From my work at Ijen, my hiking boots smell like rotten eggs. They stay in a bag in the lab, because I don’t want them stinking up my house.
