Hocking College has a new program for those interested in digging up ancient remains.

HC got its new two-year archaeology program going this fall.

"This program is really unique in that it is one of the only two-year anthropology programs in the country," archaeology coordinator Joe Wakeman said. "The overtone of the program is that it is very hands-on."

The program is 100 credits and started with 37 courses, but he said that number could fluctuate.

Wakeman said 16 of those courses are archaeology courses, but the program also has a strong Geographic Information Systems background, which involves electronic mapping.

The program has three full-time teachers and teachers from other disciplines who also are teaching archaeology courses. He said he hopes the program will increase its number of faculty members in the future. HC will be adding a part-time professor next quarter.

The program is tailored to help students get jobs in cultural resource management, he said.

Wakeman said he had experts and employers in cultural resource management come to HC to help decide what should be included in the curriculum.

"This will make our students very employable," he said. "We will have students contoured to the needs of the industry."

The goals of the program are to produce students who are employable and to produce students who can transfer to other colleges and programs.

HC has 26 full-time archaeology majors, which exceeded Wakeman's goal of 10 for the first year.

He said he also hopes to start a long-term research program that will involve all of the different classes in the program.

"There hasn't been a huge survey of the hocking area, and that could be one of the things we work on," he said.

HC archaeology student Jen Foster said all the archaeology students take the same classes at the same time.

Foster said she was already at HC but decided to switch her major from ranger services to archaeology.

"I switched to archaeology because I am more interested in finding out things about the past that nobody else knows," she said.

Archaeology student Joy Mullins has taken two courses in archaeology and is enrolled in one other course this quarter.

She said she entered the program because she was thinking about going into archaeology but wasn't sure. HC's program has allowed her to jump into the program and realize archaeology is what she wants to do.

"I'm really enjoying it," Mullins said. "It's still a little rough around the edges. They are working on figuring out how much information they can cram into our brains, but it's coming along pretty well."