New station at Capitol Reef

New experiences and learning opportunities await students with the opening of the Capitol Reef Field Station.

“You can read about it in a book, but seeing it is a different thing. When you’re there and seeing it, it becomes much more powerful,” said Kim Reynolds, manager of the Outdoor Adventure Center, which plans on using the field station for its next excursion.

The field station has many uses, from research to hands-on classroom education.

Students who are in science classes can benefit from the region’s unique geology, plant and animal life, historic locations and archeologically significant sites.

English and art students can benefit from the facility, too, finding it a good place for inspiration.

“It’s a great facility. There are so many things you can study,” said Carly Duncan, a member of the UVU Service Council.

To help the station with its goal of having a low environmental impact, students from the Service Council and the Outdoor Adventure Center participated in a service project the day after the field station opened. They spent the day replanting the native plants that were disturbed during construction of the facility.

Some of the station’s features that will be useful for students are a dormitory capable of supporting 24 students, a classroom and a meeting room.

Also, the station is run mainly on solar power and is designed to allow maximum use of sunlight to keep it environmentally friendly.

The field station is the first of its kind to be built inside a national park. It opened on Oct. 16, 2008, as a joint effort between UVU and Capitol Reef National Park and the culmination of eight years of work.