Indiana State Forests
- Clark State Forest
- Deam Lake State Recreation Area
- Ferdinand State Forest
- Greene-Sullivan State Forest
- Harrison-Crawford State Forest
- Jackson-Washington State Forest
- Martin State Forest
- Morgan-Monroe State Forest
- Owen-Putnam State Forest
- Pike State Forest
- Salamonie River State Forest
- Selmier State Forest
- Starve-Hollow SRA
- Yellowwood State Forest
Source: in.gov
A class project is taking a different approach to immersive learning by incorporating students' thesis projects to archive state history.
Students in the course, led by Ronald Morris, a professor of history, are writing a book on the history of Indiana’s state forests and are incorporating the honors thesis requirement for members of the Honors College.
This approach gives students a chance to overlap two aspects of their degree requirements by having them work together on their honors thesis in an immersive learning environment.
“It should make more students successful in accomplishing some of their requirements for an honors thesis," Morris said.
The class’s main goal is to put the book to print for commercial sale, similar to a project Morris worked with students on for a state parks book.
Indiana has 14 different forested areas that are designated as historic forests. Currently, there is no book in Indiana that documents their history.
“We came out with a state park history. Now it seems right to do a state forest book,” he said.
The book will be printed in the spring. Currently, however, there is a group of three researchers who are pulling together research from archives and other libraries.
They will then give a packet on each different state forest to 11 writers who will take the research and create a chapter of the book that will act as their honors thesis.
“From a historian’s perspective, this is amazing because you are taking primary and secondary material and for the first time putting it into your own prose,” said Mitchell Knigga, a junior public history major.
One of the researchers, Heidi Noneman, a senior chemistry and archaeology major, worked with Morris on a previous immersive learning project, which drew her to this project.
“I knew he was interested in documenting the history of Indiana, and I thought that was really cool because I’m not from Indiana,” Noneman said. “I saw state forests and thought why not.”
The driving force behind creating this book is to remind people what progressive and positive things Indiana has done and continues to do, Morris said.
“People have forgotten why we founded state forests,” he said. “We recognized we had a very healthy timber industry and that we should set aside land for it and the idea was to make sure we have sustainable and diverse population of timber.”
This conservation and sustainability element also has a historical context worth preserving, he added.
“With the state bicentennial, it’s important we take in how important they are to us and how they are similar to what the pioneers found,” he said.
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