FACETS OF A SMALL, SUCCESSFUL GEOSCIENCE PROGRAM

The Geoscience Program at Virginia’s Blue Ridge Community College (BRCC) offers a solid foundation of physical/historical geology and earth science courses, with the goal of basic geoscience literacy for every American citizen. The community college role is to provide that basic background for any student, whether they become educators, engineers, resource managers, farmers, business executives, research scientists, or materials folks in the manufacturing/technology sector. Additional strengths of the Geoscience Program at BRCC include outreach to K-12 teachers in the college’s service area, and the coordination of transfer agreements with major universities in the field of education as well as in STEM areas.

It is a challenge to get students genuinely interested in the geosciences so they will observe and appreciate the world around them, laying a foundation for lifelong learning in the process. Successful strategies include sparking student interest by seeing what they “know”, using hands-on activities with real and virtual manipulatives/models, and frequent, varied assessments. Nothing, however, matches the power of the visual- field trips, actual photos, film clips, etc. Students must realize the relevance and importance of geoscience in their everyday lives.

Teaching high school for over twenty years (in the age of high-stakes, standardized testing), and ten years at both the university and community college levels, has provided great perspective on student transition from high school to college. One of the focus areas at BRCC is addressing the lack of basic skills in incoming students today, including those in reading, writing, math, and critical thinking/problem solving. Working with faculty across the curriculum to engage students in the study of geoscience topics can be used to improve these basic skills, especially when students are studying real-world problems/issues from the present or from the past.