Over J-Term, a group of 16 Macalester students and five geology department faculty traveled to Argentina in a new short-term study away program. The two-credit course “GEOL 201: Geological Excursions in Argentina,” enabled geology students to have hands-on experience with rock formations that they have studied in previous courses.
The geology department has offered J-Term courses and field trips in the past, the last one being a 2015 excursion to study the geology of the Bahamas. Geology professors Kristi Curry Rogers and Raymond Rogers began working on a new trip to Argentina after conducting research there during a sabbatical in 2023.
“Minnesota is great for so many things,” Curry Rogers said. “But it’s not the most awesome place if you are a geologist trying to study exposures of rocks; you need to go where you can see rocks without a lot of vegetation on them.”
According to Curry Rogers, Argentina is one of the best places for this type of excursion. This is because the Argentine landscape provides unique educational geologic opportunities beyond just paleontology and sedimentology, allowing Mac students to explore other geologic fields. This includes geological sites based in the San Juan Province that contain rocks deposited in flood plains and river banks from 230 million years ago.
“It’s amazing because you can just see the sedimentary geologic time spread out before your eyes,” geology professor Emily First said.
Throughout 2024 and 2025, Curry Rogers and Rogers made two additional trips to Argentina to conduct further research, visiting geological sites and collaborating with Argentine connections and colleagues. Together, the department and on-the-ground guides in Argentina planned a trip that provides college students with an educational experience in both geology and Argentine culture.
“We had to come into the trip having made each of us a little infographic [that] we were assigned,” Bella Chan-MacRae ’28 said. “Somebody would get the topic of tango, because we [were going] to see a tango show, so they would have to write and do research on [it] and write an infographic about tango and present it.”
Additionally, during the trip, participants were required to keep field notes in a journal detailing what they had learned and saw while on the geologic excursions. They also collaborated on a group field guide with components and highlights from their time in Argentina.
The trip began with the group flying from Minneapolis to the San Juan Province via Atlanta and Buenos Aires. While in San Juan Province, they travelled in a caravan of four wheel drive trucks driven by a combination of faculty and local guides that allowed them to navigate the hilly, dry and flood-prone terrain. The group spent the majority of their time in this province exploring different geological sites including at Ischigualasto Provincial Park.
“The Ischigualasto Provincial Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site that includes rocks that predate the time when dinosaurs were abundant on earth,” Curry Rogers said. “They capture the moments when dinosaurs were first evolving and they capture some time after dinosaurs had gotten popular in Earth’s ecosystems.”
The dinosaur fossils located in Olin-Rice Science Center come from excavations done at Ischigualasto Provincial Park, Curry Rogers said.
Students spent a few days at the park, observing sedimentary sequences and other environmental features. They also searched for and found bones, though none were from dinosaurs.
“It was a great way to see some of the stuff that I’ve learned in the classroom in real life,” Noa Watson ’28 said. “It’s so abstract when you learn it in a classroom … but then when you actually get to see it … it starts to make more sense and I can see the picture more clear[ly] in my head.”
Watson anticipates that their experience in Argentina will clarify content in their geology classes this semester and fuel their interest in future field work.
For First, the trip was significant because of the variety of real-life geology experience it granted.
“It really highlighted how none of our fields work in a vacuum,” First said. Participants travelled to locations where one might expect to focus on paleontology, but the geology professors there chimed in about sedimentology and volcanoes and geomorphology as well. “You don’t get that in one hour in the classroom with one person,” First continued.
On the trip, accompanying faculty taught the students about different geologic concepts relating to their fields of study. As the geology department has professors from different expertises and backgrounds, the faculty were able to collaborate with one another to learn from each other and create a well-rounded educational experience for their students.
While in San Juan Province, the group was able to kayak to see mineral deposits in floodbanks and examine them closely. They also got the unexpected chance to hike up 12,000 feet in the Argentine Andes mountains.
“Hiking in the Andes was amazing,” Chan-MacRae said. “We went up to see a stream that was blue because the water … had minerals in it that was making the rocks it passed over blue, it was like a blue stream.”
Towards the end of the trip, the group explored Buenos Aires: they saw a tango show, shopped in street markets, ate local cuisine, toured the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires and spent time together before returning to the United States.
Now back at Macalester, the students on the trip have bonded within and between their class years, according to Watson.
“Seeing the students with each other is fun,” First said. “We had a pretty big group of seniors that graduated last year who were pretty close, and it seems like maybe now we’re regaining some of that.”
