CHALLENGES FOR UNDERGRADUATE FIELD EXPERIENCE AT A SUBURBAN CAMPUS

Montclair State University draws most of its undergraduates from urban areas and surrounding suburbs in northern New Jersey. A significant portion of our student body is a non-traditional, often older student who has returned to school but is still working full or part-time and may have family commitments. Only about 20% of our students live on campus. These demographics present challenges for the delivery of field-based earth science laboratory courses. Our initial IDIG proposal was to develop a series of short, field-oriented exercises that could be completed on or near campus within a two to three hour time block, thereby accommodating the complex scheduling problems often faced by our students.

Since our participation in IDIG 1998, progress in revisions of freshman-level earth science laboratory courses has been limited but significant: limited in that we have not been successful adding more than one or two new field experiences to each course; significant in that we now provide a field science experience for over 10 times the number of students compared with prior to IDIG. A stream discharge measurement exercise, piloted in the fall of 1998, is now used in 12 sections of Physical and Environmental Geology each year, bringing nearly 300 students into the field annually. In addition, an on-campus outcrop identification, measurement and interpretation exercise brings an additional 100 students into the field annually in our Historical Geology course. A new departmental culture supporting field experiences has translated to the department’s geography and meteorology courses as well with new field exercises focusing on topics such as acid rain measurement, micrometeorology, and urban heat island analysis.

With a new crop of majors coming out of introductory courses with increased field experience, we also designed an integrated field and laboratory research experience for geoscience majors using a geochemistry analytical laboratory partially supported by a National Science Foundation equipment grant, written based on our IDIG experience. Twenty one student research papers have been delivered at regional and national meetings in the 5 years following this project compared with only 5 papers in the 5 years prior.