A FIELD TRIP TO GEOLOGICALLY DIVERSE TERRAIN IN GEORGIA TO ENHANCE AN INTRODUCTORY HONORS GEOLOGY COURSE

In the Spring Semester of 2003, eight introductory geology students from Bowling Green State University attended a field-trip to Georgia as an optional part of their class. The seven day field excursion's first stop was at Cloudland Canyon State Park in the NW corner of Georgia and included stops at Pettijohn's Cave, Stone Mountain, the Oconee River, the Athens Gneiss, Jekyll Island, St. Simon's Island and returned via Great Smoky Mountain National Park in TN/NC. The climate of Georgia, its geological diversity and geographic location make it an ideal area for introductory field excursions during mid-semester breaks for institutions of higher learning located in the eastern half of the United States. Its terrain offers willing students the opportunity to see sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks, a host of land forms including caves, mountains, valleys and islands and geological events from Cambrian to Holocene in age. The Oconee River also provides students with an example of how stream development and sediment size and mineralogy changes from headwaters to base level. The excursion itinerary and a map of the route as well as photographs of field stops are shared. Results from student research projects that stemmed from sediment samples taken from the Oconee River are also given.