PROSPERING AS A SOLITARY GEOLOGIST AT A SMALL COLLEGE

Teaching at a small college has advantages and disadvantages. At Principia College, a small four-year liberal arts college in Illinois, I am the sole faculty member in geology. I offer only a minor, not a major, in geology, and I teach mostly general distribution courses that have no prerequisites. Survival techniques include adjusting my sites and collaborating outside my institution on research. Rather than turning out excellent geology majors, my goal is to inspire all students to analytically observe the Earth around them – read the landforms and rocks in order to understand Earth’s processes and history, appreciate how and where mineral resources occur, recognize potential for natural hazards, and understand environmental issues. I advise the potential geology major who doesn’t want to transfer to take a year each of calculus, physics, and chemistry, a foreign language, all the courses I teach, and then go to graduate school to take the upper level geology courses.

With a typical class size of 16, I challenge myself to help each student understand the material by using a variety of teaching techniques including PowerPoint presentations dominated by diagrams and photos of natural features along with i-clicker questions, demonstrations, and tactile and kinesthetic activities, including local field trips. To help them appreciate the scientific process, I give them activities that require them to use skills they’ve just learned to solve problems. In some cases, I have them research an area to determine what natural hazards are present.

With respect to research, I have the great fortune of having a mammoth on our campus that we are excavating. I teach an experiential field/lab class in which the students excavate the skeletal material and prepare the pieces in the lab. They learn field and lab techniques as well as information about mammoths, the Pleistocene, and isotopic studies of teeth and tusks. They give tours to school groups and others who visit, and we collaborate with scientists at other institutions. Students tend to be strongly motivated to learn in this course because they are doing authentic research and develop real questions.

Although there are drawbacks, there are opportunities for a solitary geology faculty member to have a strong impact on their students.