BROADENING THE DEFINITION OF GEOSCIENCE RESEARCH TO THE INTRODUCTORY LEVEL

Penn State Brandywine (PSUBW) is one of twenty campuses in the Pennsylvania State University system. With a student enrollment of approximately 1,600 students, my commuter campus has a primary mission of providing the first two years of entrance-to-major courses and general education programming. Although undergraduate research is highly valued at Penn State as a whole, it had not been a focal point of the undergraduate curriculum at PSUBW. Limited facilities and equipment, combined with the competing pressures in the lives of the commuting student population, have restricted efforts.

Despite being the only geologist on campus with no dedicated teaching lab or research space, and with no teaching assistants or geology majors, I have identified ways of aligning research with the mission of my land-grant institution. I view undergraduate research as neither an add-on nor optional activity, but part of my faculty responsibilities. I have built a research-rich geoscience curriculum that includes developing skills in introductory courses for nonscience majors. The skill set includes information literacy, data analysis, graphical presentation of data, and additional professional skills. The projects I supervise may be imbedded in a course or an independent study, ranging from inquiry- to community-based projects.

I have been impressed with the ownership my freshmen and sophomores take with the research projects, despite the challenge of learning the content and developing the skill set at the same time. Some students will use an inquiry-based project from a course as a springboard to an independent or group project in a future semester. Some projects have produced results worthy of presentation and publication.

Although I have had successes in mentoring nonscience, lower-division students in undergraduate research, my biggest challenge remains convincing others that research is appropriate at the introductory level. On my campus and in the larger geoscience community, one does not have to look far for someone that will say that undergraduate research cannot be accomplished at a two-year school with nonmajors. However, introductory-level undergraduate research does exist and allows students to develop several skill sets that will benefit them in all their courses, no matter which discipline or career they pursue.