For most ASU students, the word “survival” means making it through finals.
But for 60 students this fall, Professor Scott Kozakiewicz’s class will be an in-depth introduction to overcoming real life-or-death situations.
Kozakiewicz has been teaching PRM 340, Outdoor Survival, for 21 years at ASU, lending his survival expertise to a variety of students.
The course’s unorthodox curriculum covers how to build fires and shelter, distinguish between inedible and edible plants and administer emergency first aid.
“It literally takes all of the components (of survival) and breaks them down,” Kozakiewicz said. “We incorporate desert, alpine and water survival.”
He said the class even utilizes Lot 59 and the Student Recreation Complex pool for fire building and swimming training.
TJ Picarello took both the beginner and advanced versions of Kozakiewicz’s class, and was a teaching assistant to the professor before graduating in 2005 with a business degree.
“(It was) definitely one of the most influential classes I took at ASU,” Picarello said.
He recalled a winter survival class trip in January 2005 to the Mogollon Rim, which extends more than 200 miles across northern Arizona and reaches up to 7,000 feet above sea level.
Picarello said harrowing conditions of freezing rain and heavy snow put the students to the test in their outdoor classroom.
Despite some students dropping the class afterward, Picarello said it was a defining trip for building camaraderie with his fellow beginner survivalists.
“It was an amazing trip for finding out about the other people in the class,” Picarello said. “We came out of that trip a pretty close group of people.”
Kozakiewicz, who has been interested in survival techniques since earning the rank of Eagle Scout as a boy, said these field trips are the validation of his daily teaching.
“It’s below freezing, and they are warm because of the way they’ve built their fire and built their shelter and navigated through the woods,” Kozakiewicz said. “To me, that is rewarding because you see everything pull together.”
Picarello credits his success as a businessman to his time in Kozakiewicz’s classes.
“His approach to problem solving is really strong and something I still use in my day-to-day life today and in my profession,” he said.
The survival professor said he still considers himself a student of Mother Nature, and personally follows his own curriculum.
“Everything in life is either a liability or an asset,” Kozakiewicz said. “Our responsibility as students of survival is to turn every liability into an asset.”
Reach the reporter at brennan.j.smith@asu.edu
