The VolkswagenFoundation funds a series of two summer schools entitled “Earth Surface Dynamics – Understanding Processes at the Earth’s Vulnerable Skin”. Here are some details about the content of the summer school.
The summer schools each comprise three modules with duration of one week, which will take place at different locations in Germany. The students are expected to participate in all six modules. During each of the weeks of the summer schools, 2–5 instructors are present at the summer school locations, contributing to the lectures, demonstrations, discussions, group works and excursions. Furthermore, the instructors are invited, similar to the participants, to give 12–15 minute conference-style presentations about their current research.
Each week of the summer schools includes five weekdays of lectures, exercises and demonstrations in the morning, and group work in the afternoon. At the end of the afternoon there is room to discuss the results of the progressing group work in short presentations. In the first week of the summer school series, the 25 participants will be divided into groups of 4-5 people, each of which are from different countries and scientific fields, with groups advised by the instructors. The participants in each group will work on weekly challenges.
On Saturdays we organize short excursions, on foot or by a 30-seater bus, in the vicinity of the location, during which we visit interesting sites to study Earth surface processes, but also cultural and historical sites near the course locations. During the week, there is also the opportunity for individual groups to perform field measurements in the vicinity of the summer school location. The gathered data will be processed in the group challenge tasks.
On Sundays, the arrival and departure of the participants and instructors will be organized. On Sunday after the first week of each summer school, we will move all participants and instructors by bus to the next summer school location. As with the last summer school series, the participants are expected to come with their private laptops. The organizers will provide the software, data and textbooks at least two months before the beginning of the summer school series.