ISU Students get credit for Burning Man

"The Burning Man festival sets up camp at the end of every summer in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, a rare flower on the sand-swept plain.

Decorated cars crisscross the terrain. Drug-laced dance parties pulse each night until dawn. Temporary sculptures appear out of nowhere, only to be destroyed in a bonfire at the end of the week with the giant effigy for which the event is named.

There are always surprises, but few this year raised eyebrows among the 50,000 participants quite like the presence of a dozen Iowa State University students from Samantha Krukowski's summer class "Shifting Sands: Transient Architectures in the Desert." Scholars have visited the festival over the years for research, but as far as anyone can tell, this was the first time an entire class participated for college credit."