THE INTEGRATION OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, SERVICE LEARNING, AND ETHICS INTO THE GEOLOGY MAJOR AT THE COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY LEVEL

Recent assessment of the undergraduate geology major at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls revealed that professional development, service learning, and ethics, three non-traditional components of our program, could be enhanced and strengthened for the mutual benefit of our students and our off-campus community. Through the assessment process we discovered that these components were being introduced only in an informal way with a number of our students "slipping through the cracks" without meaningful participation in these areas. As a consequence, we have just instituted a two-part professional development and service learning requirement. Professional development includes required attendance at state, regional, or national professional meetings, attendance at geological field conferences and on-campus geology speakers, job shadowing of professional geologists, and Mine Safety and Hazard Administration training. Community service involves participation in geologically related projects that benefit the community, including organization of geologic collections for middle schools, water-quality/stream hydrology studies, analysis of slope-failure problems along highway road cuts, and giving occasional presentations to elementary school science classes and scout troops. Professional ethics will be integrated formally into the curricula of our sophomore seminar and senior research experience classes. We hope these changes will benefit our students in an increasingly difficult job market, as well as raise the visibility of our geology program to a public with little understanding of what geologists do.