CHANGES IN GEOLOGY SUMMER FIELD CAMP AT WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND THEIR EFFECTS ON FACULTY AND STUDENTS

In 1980, the WWU summer field course was lengthened to six weeks, taught by one faculty member who was compensated by being given a quarter off with pay during the following academic year. (WWU also offers a field geology course during spring term with combined enrollment of 20 to 40 students annually.) In 1999 Jontek Wodzicki taught the summer course and then became ill and died in fall. This event brought to light regulations preventing faculty members from being paid for a summer course in a different term. The next instructor for the course could not continue after teaching for three summers with no compensatory time off, and the Geology Department changed to having the summer course taught by a combination of three faculty members teaching two weeks each. That pattern is continuing, with considerable advantages and also some drawbacks.

Advantages include having students exposed to three different approaches to field work and mapping and to a wider variety of settings, types of mapping, and rocks than had generally been the case when the course was taught by a single person. Now included in addition to mapping of tilted, folded, and faulted sedimentary rocks are collecting of oriented samples and analysis of structural data (Housen), geomorphic mapping and mapping of active faults (Clark), mapping metamorphic aureoles (Hirsch), and outcrop mapping and mapping in volcanic rocks (Suczek). Collaboration in the planning, organization, and discussion of teaching methods all help to make the course stronger. Drawbacks include less topical coherence, different expectations of the students depending on the faculty member, and a greater burden of keeping logistics and personalities working smoothly falling on the teaching assistant, since no faculty member is present for the whole course. The department developed a list of the concepts and techniques that should be covered, which we initially followed. However, the active faculty and the order in which they teach change from year to year, and most years we do not reconsider whether everything on the list is covered. Reaction from students has been mainly positive, and they consider it an advantage to get to know three faculty members well under field conditions.