Sailing students
19 May 2010 — Erie Times-News

By VALERIE MYERS
valerie.myers@timesnews.com

Erie’s U.S. Brig Niagara is charting a new course.

Students from several colleges are on board to study Great Lakes and maritime history in an intensive, three-week course. They’re also learning to sail the reproduction 1812 warship, and that is an education in itself, Allegheny College senior Brian Sciulli said. Sciulli climbed to the topgallant mast, about 40 or 45 feet above the deck, after boarding the Niagara last weekend. “It was a little nerve-racking,” said Sciulli, of Glenshaw. “But the crew kept me comfortable and I had a harness on, so there was really nothing to worry about. Any anxiety or nerves so far have been overrun by the need to get things done.” Sciulli, with 14 other Allegheny, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and Mount Holyoke College students, set sail from Erie Maritime Museum on Tuesday. They will visit Port Colborne, Ontario; Put-in-Bay, Ohio, where the Battle of Lake Erie was fought in 1813; Kelly’s Island, Ohio; and Long Point, Ontario, before returning to home port in Erie on June 4. “For students to sail the Niagara to the actual locations their professors are teaching them about is so exciting,” said Caleb Pifer, president of Educational Partner-Ships for the American Foundation for Education Under Sail. Pifer organized the new Great Lakes College Consortium that sponsors the Niagara course. The consortium includes Gannon University, Mercyhurst College, Penn State Behrend and Walsh University, in North Canton, Ohio, in addition to Allegheny, Edinboro and Mount Holyoke, in South Hadley, Mass. The partnership expands educational opportunities by allowing students from each participating college to sign on for the Niagara class, Niagara Senior Capt. Walter Rybka said. Rybka and Allegheny College history professor Ian Binnington are team teaching the inaugural class and expect students to learn more than Great Lakes history. “The value of a sailing ship as a classroom is not mostly about learning archaic and obsolete technical skills, but about the social lessons of being part of a small community afloat — learning to depend on each other and the importance of communicating face to face,” Rybka said. “And for studying the War of 1812, international border relations and the development of the Great Lakes, it’s a perspective students would not get otherwise,” he said.
Allegheny College sophomore Jocelyn Levis, of Saegertown, describes the course as “perfect.”
“I’ve grown up around this ship, and have visited it and been aboard it many times,” Levis said. “I am a history major and a re-enactor. For me, this is the perfect class.”