Students from BHSU got the experience of a lifetime when they traveled east to learn about and experience wolves in their natural habitat. The Audubon Center of the North Woods located in Sandstone, Minn. put on an interim course for college students to study the predatory ecology of wolves.

“The wolf class was awesome. It was totally worth every penny it cost,” said Kyle Hauck, a secondary science education major.

Students learned about wolves in a classroom that was held at the Audubon Center through lectures, where they also learned about all of the prey species and predators that wolves share an ecosystem with. Students got to engage in the wolves’ real life habitat as they traveled to the North Shore and Ely, Minn. later in their trip.

“You’ll see captive and wild wolves and get to do aerial and ground telemetry,” Hauck said.

“Learning from Bryan Wood was incredible, not only in the classroom but also the hands on and discovery learning that he so much emphasized on,” said Marisa Kritzberger, a nursing and biology student. Wood is the Co-Executive Director at Audubon Center of the North Woods. “He made not only an impact on us scholastically but also showed us respect for the outdoors.”

There were six different schools in attendance in the class with roughly 30 students who took part. BHSU was the only public college with a total of eight students and one TA.

The class was held from Jan. 1 to Jan. 18. The wolf class is held annually and has scholarship opportunities available. According to auduboncollege.org, students who participate in the course will receive three upper level credits.

“It was a great experience for me,” Kritzberger said. “It was amazing to see students from different parts of the country come together in the coldness of northern Minnesota to study predators.”

The course took the students to the Wildlife Science Center, the North American Bear Center, the International Wolf Center, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior.