Mission 2014 Field Trip: The (belated) first day blog

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The (belated) first day blog

Hey everyone!

My name is David Wise and I am one of the bloggers for the Mission 2014 trip to Sirsi India. We finally got to the Earthwatch location in Sirsi about 2pm local time this afternoon, and I am finally recovered enough from jet lag to be able to blog with the help of a few powernaps. We left the MIT Campus at 6pm on Friday so it only took about thirty hours of traveling spread between two busses and three planes. It finally felt like we were actually half way around the world driving through all the small towns between Hubli Airport and Sirsi. We are staying in a very rural region of India—about 100 Kilometers away from the nearest airport—located in the Western Ghat Mountain Range. We got to see all kinds of little shops, farms, the occasional monkey, and herds of cattle that frequently blocked the road and were in no hurry to clear a path. It is a nice change to be in such a warm place after battling a long Boston Winter at MIT. Most of our day was planned to give us a chance to recover and get used to being in India. The Earthwatch staff briefed us on what our itinerary would be this week, and helped us brainstorm to come up with what our goals are for this week. It seems like we are going to have a super busy week, but it will be a lot of fun. I am also in the Radio class carrying recording equipment with me and have a GPS to map for the class, so I will try and post some sound clips and GPS points so you can hear exactly what we are hearing and see where we are. I’m going to go to sleep now (Early morning tomorrow!) but there will be more posts coming soon!

David

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About the Class

Mission 2014 is part of Terrascope, a learning program for MIT freshman. Each year the program begins with the class (12.000 Solving Complex Problems, Mission 201x). For this year their mission was to design a plan that will produce and distribute enough food to feed the planet over the next century, while ensuring that efficiency and equity are maximized with minimal disruption to the environment. With a world population of 9 billion expected by 2050 – and a billion people currently malnourished – we simply cannot continue with business as usual. An integrated cost-effective global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security. This must include a major re-thinking of agricultural practices as well as modifying the diets of much of the world's population. The students of 12.000 researched the problem and presented their solution in the form of a website as well as a public presentation followed by interrogation by a panel of experts. The website and presentation were a huge success.

About Terrascope

In the Spring semester many Terrascope students take part in one or more of three activities. These include: a hands-on class (1.016) where the students work on designing, building and implementing solutions to their problem; Terrascope Radio (SP360), where the students produce a series of radio programs on their topic including the field trip; and lastly the Terrascope field experience.

Each year alumni mentors play a very important part in the success of Terrascope. Many come to class and group meetings, communicate via email, and are generally extremely helpful if not a little bit jealous of being a MIT freshman! This year we are fortunate that three of our mentors are making the trip with us—Bob Gurnitz, Johnny Yang and Bhupendra Khetani

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped to make this trip possible. At Earthwatch the complex logistics have been coordinated by Grace Velardi and Alana Jones in the U.S. and the educational program by Rachel Batley in the U.K. At MIT our Terrascope administrator, Debra Aczel has spent countless hours guiding everyone through the acquisition of visas, answering many many questions, and remaining enthusiastic and upbeat. We all owe Debra a great deal of gratitude and hopefully the trip will go off flawlessly and she will be able to enjoy it and learn alongside the rest of us.

The trip this year is supported by the Baruch Foundation whose generosity ensures that another Terrascope class can take part in an international learning experience.