KEEPING IT REAL: MAKING THE GEOLOGY OF THE NATIONAL PARKS RELEVANT FOR NON-SCIENCE MAJORS

Many students enroll in introductory level geoscience courses to fulfill institutional science requirements. Making the course material relevant to these non-science majors is essential to attracting and keeping their interest. There are many ways to make courses about the geology of our national parks relevant. Three that work well for me are local field trips that exhibit features similar to national parks, incorporating scientific articles on the geology of parks we study in class, and investigating real data and real questions in extended lab exercises.

In central Ohio, most national parks are too far away to visit. However, our local geology exhibits features formed by the same processes as more famous parks, on a smaller scale. So while we study Mammoth Cave National Park, we take a field trip to Ohio Caverns. When we study the Grand Canyon, we visit Clifton Gorge. As students learn about Glacier National Park, they examine glacial deposits in Springfield, Ohio. While none of our local geologic features are as spectacular as those in the parks we study, the students want to know how these local features formed.

Many of my students are surprised, and intrigued, to learn that geoscientists do not yet have all of the answers. I include structured reading assignments on current research in the national parks we study in class. Using articles or excerpts from Geology, GSA Bulletin, GSA Today, Science, or Nature, I ask students to identify the question being investigated, the methods used to study the question, the data collected, and the author(s) interpretation of the data. While keeping students interested in the parks we study, these guided reading assignments also reinforce for students what it means to do science.

I have also designed or modified several extended lab exercises that ask students to grapple with real data and real questions. In these exercises, my students work to answer questions such as ‘If the Pacific Plate were stationary, which would be bigger: Hawaii or Olympus Mons?’, ‘How faithful is Old Faithful?’ and ‘When will the glaciers be gone from Glacier National Park?’ I find that students become quite caught up in these questions, and want to know the “real” answers. At this point, the students are “hooked.”