EXTENDED FIELD TRIP

Since most of the students were from California, he encouraged developing a program that would give students the opportunity to reinforce classroom lessons through travel opportunities related to landscape architecture study. Walt Tryon had seen a successful offcampus program at Syracuse, but the faculty did not travel with the students; they met only once mid-semester to guide and teach them. A similar program would not find support within the California State University because of its high risk. Dick Zweifel was very interested in a Cal Poly abroad program so Smith, Tryon, Bartels and Zweifel developed a program that could be institutionalized.

In a dress rehearsal to a quarter-long experience off campus, Zweifel lead the first group of 26 students to Hawaii to attend the annual ASLA meeting, visit offices and projects.

After receiving CSU and campus approvals the following year, the first EFT program was launched and sent a cohort of students to Germany with Jorg Bartels for five weeks and on to England with Zweifel for five weeks.

The program included a pre-planning elective course one quarter before leaving. During their quarter abroad, Cal Poly landscape architecture students completed 12 units of major courses equivalent to those they would have had on campus. Faculty participating covered each other’s courses on campus while the other was overseas and received partial reimbursement for travel expenses from the department. To this day, Cal Poly’s EFT model is the only such recognized program in the CSU system. Unfortunately, the EFT has largely been discontinued since 2010 due to Cal Poly’s risk concerns for student travel and budgetary constraints.