| Summary: | CONCORDIAN CAMPUS NEWS MARCH 13, 20093 the BY ASHA SAARI Staff Writer Continued from page 1 POLICY: Change will aff ect small number FOSSILS: Bones left signifi cant impact on many A culture not yet lost: PHOTO BY HANNA STEVENS Junior Joanna Shields smiles for the applause during a concert in Seattle, Wash., as part of the Concordia College Choir’s annual tour. PHOTO SUBMITTED BY THE AMERIIKAN POIJAT The seven member Finnish brass septet, Ameriikan Poijat, were entertainers at this year’s an-nual Nordic Gala held at the Hjemkomst Center. bones, sophomore Matthew Schmidt was left speechless. Schmidt, who spends eight hours a week volunteering in the archeology department categorizing and cleaning the bones, felt the sudden emp-tiness of the room the sec-ond he set his foot inside the threshold. Before Schmidt left cam-pus for Concordia’s spring break, every inch of the tables in the archeology department was piled with fossils to re-turn. When he came back, the tables were bare. The bones were gone. As a student who worked with the bones only after they were dug up, Schmidt can’t imagine what kind of despair and frustration Nell-ermoe must be experiencing through the whole ordeal. Nellermoe and volunteer Don Olson were the ones who fi rst birthed the fossils out of the ground in South Dakota. They spent every spare second of the past four weeks preparing to give them away. Although Nellermoe has worked hard suppressing the feelings he has about the re-turning the precious fossils, Schmidt knows that Neller-moe is having a hard time let-ting the fossils go. But no matter what he may be feeling, Nellermoe keeps a calm and collected composure, insisting that however tragic, the trouble this situation has caused him was a blessing in disguise for the future of the archeology department. “It made us go through the collection, and make room for more,” Nellermoe said. Nellermoe’s optimistic attitude is one of his many personal attributes that has helped Concordia’s archeol-ogy department become one of the best-kept secrets of the school. While most archeologists generally spend most of their careers digging in the same place, Nellermoe has made Concordia’s collection unique from others by gathering bones from several diff erent historical eras and geographi-cal areas. Concordia’s archeology department sends fi ve to ten students to an archeological site every summer. The stu-dents can receive credit for their experience, but most of them need to pay for the trips on their own. The college’s re-search funds pay for the trips of two or three students every summer. The digs that Nellermoe has been bringing students on for the past fi ve years have been a gamble, heard by word of mouth from local archeolo-gists in the western part of the country. In 2003 Nellermoe and his students set out for a site in Wyoming. Not sure of what they’d fi nd there, the team put all their cards in and ended up unearthing the remains of a camarasaurus. The team then continued their exploration by following a local geologist to another site where they discovered the pelvic bones, jawbone and vertebrae of an allosaurus. The species that they found had never been found before, and Nellermoe decided to return to that par-ticular site for the next three summers to uncover more of the creature. Nellermoe and his team then heard about what Nell-ermoe calls an ‘outlaw site,’ where, after they found the bones of a diplodocid, the group returned for two years. Meanwhile, the group has also worked in Montana where they’ve been uncovering sev-eral tyrannosaurus brain cases. And last summer Nellermoe worked with his students to uncover half of the frill bone of a torosaurus. They will re-turn to this site again this summer. The experience of digging in Montana is extremely dif-ferent than that of working in South Dakota, however. While in the Standing Rock reservation the bones were already exposed from the cliff they were buried in, the Mon-tana archeology teams spend most of their time searching for bones. “Whereas in South Da-kota, you just had to get down on your hands and knees and dig,” Nellermoe said. While the team travels to multiple sites every summer, Nellermoe has spent the most time on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. The num-ber of discoveries that Con-cordia’s archeology depart-ment has made is impressive, but a large portion of it rested on the 14,090 bones that were returned earlier this month. The bones, while holding a lot of academic worth to the archeology world, are also ex-tremely valuable by monetary means. The vertebrae of the ed-montosaurus that Concordia found in South Dakota are worth at least one hundred dollars apiece, and depending on the bone’s cosmetic shape and rarity could be worth much more. “If you look at a single piece of a bone and you think about it, a dinosaur could be worth millions,” said Schmidt. What the Standing Rock Sioux tribe will do with the returned fossils is still un-clear. According to the tribe’s paleontology committee, es-tablished in 2003, the tribe’s long-term goals include build-ing a museum for fossils and other cultural and historic items found on the reserva-tion. When the tribe demanded that the college give them their bones back, they had no idea what type of project they were getting into. Nellermoe says that he’ll never forget the way that the mouths of the tribe’s repre-sentatives fell when they saw all of the bones that they were asking to be returned. “They were awestruck,” Nellermoe said. Most visitors who come to Concordia’s archeology department for the fi rst time have a similar reaction. Schmidt admits that when he fi rst set out to visit Neller-moe’s lab, he wasn’t expect-ing much. He thought there wouldn’t be too many bones because archeology is a small program at Concordia. How-ever, the sophomore soon re-alized that he was very wrong. He considers himself lucky to be able to work in such an excellent program. Volunteer-ing in the archeology depart-ment has inspired Schmidt to continue studying archeology in graduate school and even-tually pursue a career as a re-ligious archeologist in Israel. Working so closely with bones isn’t something Schmidt ever thought that he’d be able to do. “Every kid has a dream to be an astronaut, a race car driver or work with dinosaurs,” Schmidt said. “And when you actually get the chance to do it, it’s like a childhood dream that you blew away years ago fi nally coming true.” for these internships, a key step will be planning, coor-dinating, and receiving ap-proval from the Cooperative Education & Global Edu-cation offi ces in advance,” Stompro said. According to Per Ander-son, Director of Interna-tional Education, the policy change will aff ect only a small number of students. Last year, only seven of the 128 students who studied abroad for a semester or a year took non-approved programs. “When students take a non-approved program, they can select from hundreds of options. The downside is that students may select a program with important un-knowns that members of the Offi ce of Global Education are not aware of,” Anderson said. “This is a recipe for trouble, and studying abroad is too important to invite trouble. The new policy is designed to maximize the joys and benefi ts of study away and to minimize trou-bles.” Anderson says the key to good programming is the es-tablished relationships that Global Education has with the faculty and staff at part-ner institutions that are re-sponsible for student learn-ing. “They know the academ-ic workings of the program and how it serves the Con-cordia curriculum,” Ander-son said. “They learn from student experience how to improve the program and are able to monitor risk and safety. When Concordia ap-proves a program, the col-lege selects for aff ordability, quality, safety, and academic integration.” Stacy Rodlund, assis-tant to the director of In-ternational Education said that the Global Education department is constantly considering and developing new semester programs and approving two to three each year. The department has of-fers 30 semester programs, nine exploration seminars, six may seminars, fi ve sum-mer school, four fi eld studies and two practicum opportu-nities. Students who choose to study abroad through non- Concordia programs should be aware that they will not receive fi nancial aid, safety monitoring or be covered by the evacuation and medical insurance that the college provides to students abroad. In essence, Anderson said that students who elect to study abroad on a non-ap-proved program need to be sure “that they are selecting a quality program that will look out for all of their inter-ests abroad – academic, per-sonal and social.” Students with ques-tions or concerns about the new policy or about study-ing abroad should talk to the Global Education Of-fi ce. The new policy will be printed in the next college catalog. “I’m just glad it all worked out,” Tetreault said. “Even though things were complicated at fi rst, it’s good to know that the next time someone runs into the same problem as I did, it will be easier.” Nordic Gala celebrates Scandinavian culture The sun goes down and another February weekend on the frozen tundra ap-proaches. The clock strikes 6:00 p.m. Within the walls of the Heritage Hjemkomst In-terpretive Center on Satur-day, February 21, corks begin to fl y off glass bottles in an-ticipation of wine tasting. A three-course gourmet smor-gasbord, Taste of Scandina-via, is comprised of various Nordic salads, fi sh, cheese, bread and meat that taunt noses across 7,000 square foot fl oor of the Hjemkomst Center. A Nordic silent auc-tion features over 100 arts and homespun crafts of the Scandinavian culture, includ-ing two round-trip fl ights to Europe compliments of Ice-landair. The 6th Annual Nordic Gala has begun. The Hjemkomst Center once again caters to the Nor-dic Gala, a fundraiser whose proceeds benefi t year-round programs honoring diff erent cultures. The fundraiser kick starts the cultural festivities in Fargo-Moorhead, like the 32nd Annual Scandinavian Hjemkomst Festival in June. This year, the theme is “Nor-dic Spirit Rocks” hosted by Fargo-Moorhead’s Nordic Culture Club. Claudia M. Pratt, execu-tive director of Nordic Cul-ture Club, ensures that the organization stands behind their mission to preserve, celebrate, and perpetuate Nordic cultures, including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Pratt has been a member of the nonprofi t alliance for seven years but has known of the festivals for 25 years. “I grew up with the festi-val as a little girl,” Pratt said. NCC focuses on the Scandinavian connections within the region, as Clay and Cass County is almost 50 percent Scandinavian. Al-though Pratt considers Fargo to be the stronghold of Scan-dinavian culture, NCC has a club for each culture to en- Continued from page 1 More GALA Page 4 Bring your macho man hunger to Paradiso for a party on a platter – or just a party! Enjoy an original Mexican tradition every time you visit. 801 38th St. South • Fargo www.paradiso.com MACH_CO
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