AN UNDERGRADUATE COURSE IN GEOLOGICAL MATERIALS: EXPERIENCE AND PROSPECTS

Today, as earth science curricula are evolving rapidly, some programs are adopting new approaches to the study of earth materials. Hybrid courses, combining mineralogy with geochemistry or petrology with tectonics, are examples. At many colleges and universities, new curricular tracks or concentrations in some specialized earth-science fields are beginning to find a single geological materials course to be an attractive requirement in lieu of the standard mineralogy-petrology sequence. Adopting such a requirement allows more room in a student's program for courses that address surface processes or environmental geoscience. In any event, a curricular de-emphasis on minerals and rocks seems inevitable, so we need to consider how best to respond.

Since the fall semester of 1988, we have been offering such a course at North Carolina State University. Introduction to Geological Materials is a 4-credit hour course requiring 3 hours of lecture and one 3-hour lab per week. It is essentially a condensed version of our majors' sequence of three mineralogy-petrology courses (13 credit hours). Having prerequisites of physical geology and chemistry, it was intended primarily to meet the needs of many students in fields outside geology. It is appropriate for students pursuing a geology minor and serves as an alternate prerequisite for some advanced courses. The syllabus devotes 3 or 4 weeks each to mineralogy, igneous petrology, sedimentary petrology/stratigraphy, and metamorphic petrology. Fundamentals of thin-section petrography, X-ray diffraction, field trips, and lithofacies analysis are integrated.

In reality, the class size (4 - 14) has remained smaller than we had expected (12 - 20). Although a few students have taken the course as an elective in order to explore geology as a potential major, most have come from specific programs in Science Education and Environmental Science that require it. Students who have completed the course have had success in more advanced geology courses. A major problem has been the lack of a suitable textbook. We have experimented with several; they do not cover the breadth of course topics and they tend to shoot too high and or too low. Another continuing concern is the necessary trade-off of time-consuming conceptual material in favor of covering the basics and devoting attention to applied aspects.