New Students Head into Great Outdoors

Eighteen first-year Westmont students head out on a unique orientation program that will take them trekking through the North Yosemite backcountry Aug. 11-23. Inoculum, an optional introduction to Westmont, offers students several units of academic and physical education credit.

Telford Work, associate professor of religious studies, and Paul Willis, professor of English, will lead two student groups. Students with Work’s group will read C. S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” while Willis’ group studies John Muir’s “My First Summer in the Sierra.” Students will lead discussions on the books during backpacking breaks and write a paper later in the semester.

Although several schools offer first-year seminars or programs that bring small groups of students together with faculty, few if any offer 12 days of backcountry experience like Westmont’s Inoculum, which alumnus Dave Willis created in 1974.

Tom Fikes, Westmont professor of psychology and neuroscience, will also join the excursion. He says students on the trip talk about issues such as Christian perspectives on environmentalism, creation, wilderness ethics and their assigned reading. “You can sit in a classroom on campus in an environmentally beautiful part of the world and think about that,” says Fikes, “but it’s not the same as sitting in the dirt stirring your hot chocolate and being immersed in the wilderness.”

Fikes says there’s a special spot in the Sierra where he likes to teach the students how to rock climb.

“There’s a gorgeous wall looking over a hanging meadow at 10,000 feet, and everyone can watch everyone else climb and rappel,” Fikes says. “It looks really intense.”

Students often say the most memorable part of the trip is the solitude and contemplation, and the absence of cell phones and social networking.