The Barn is home for the Semester. The 1st floor is classroom space. Students' rooms are on the 2nd floor. The 3rd floor is open-air work space.

The Barn, and a dogwood chair built by 2002 Field Semester students, provide a comfortable place to live, study and lounge.

Composting toilets, a graywater system, wood-fired boiler and salvaged building materials make the wash house a lesson in sustainable building.

The Beck Homestead includes the cookhouse, on the left, and Agnes Beck's year-round residence, on the right.

Wilderness First Aid is taught...in the Wilderness!

Students learn a few tricks for horsepacking since stock carries some of our gear to our first backcountry camp.

On a Biogeography hike, students discovered the first-ever documented occurrence of a whitebark pine tree peeled by Native Americans as a food source.

Students learn to cope with, and enjoy, learning outdoors for two months, even in a blizzard in the high country.

Striving for sustainable living means washing and drying A LOT of Ziploc bags after the backpacking trip.

Instructor Tom Parker teaches practical skills in tool use and safety during a day spent chopping firewood for local elders.

Students deliver wood to a long-time Swan Valley resident in preparation for the long winter.

The classroom for Watershed Dynamics...the Swan River.

Discovery of a Western Toad, an uncommon find on the Swan River, sends students scurrying for their field journals.

Small group size during the Semester means everyone gets an opportunity for hands-on learning.

Learning to use a transit for surveying stream channel morphology is just one of many practical skills students gain experience in.

Instructor Melanie Parker and students provide entertainment during Agnes Beck's 80th birthday party at the Swan Valley Community Hall.

Snorkeling at night with a flashlight is actually an excellent way to observe fish and their habitat up close.

Instructor Andrea Stephens lectures mid-stream during Watershed Dynamics class.

If you want to understand the environmental impacts associated with roads, it helps to build some yourself.

Road construction and road restoration...all accomplished by the same expert excavator operator.

Professional trappers teach a lesson on the ecology of aquatic mammals.

Students develop a wide-ranging set of skills during the Semester, including learning to cook indoors and out.

More Field Skills...hitches and knots for setting up a wall tent, base camp for a trip in the Blackfoot Valley.

Students learn directly about the neverending job of ranchers - building and fixing fence.

Under the watchful eye of a professional forester and guest lecturer, students learn timber assessment skills.

Students study field journal techniques at the beginning of the Semester. Thereafter, courses use the journal as the basis for most assignments.

Close personal observation of plants, animals and landscapes is the basis of the Biogeography course.

Instructor Steve Lamar discusses a tree core during a Biogeography hike.

A Flathead Valley family shares their home, and ice cream maker, during a four day study of the timber industry and sustainable logging practices.

An exploration of the recent Moose Fire leads to discussion of fire ecology and wildlands fire management.

A long-time resident of the North Fork of the Flathead discusses his views of forest management.

Students learn firsthand about the wood products industry while touring a plywood mill in the Flathead Valley.

Studying a recent timber sale with the forester who laid the sale out.

Up close and personal on a recent cutting unit.

A spirited investigation of fungi during a Biogeography hike.

Students live with Swan and Blackfoot Valley families during a three day "homestay" patterned after foreign exchange programs.

A long-time Swan Valley resident discusses the operation of his sawmill.

Students share Field Skills knowledge and enthusiasm during a one-day field trip for local elementary school students.

Learning about the wood products industry from start to finish involves building rustic furniture from lodgepole salvaged from the Beck Homestead.

Enjoying the finished product!

Sunset from the Beck Homestead.