AT HOME ON THE RANGE: MAKING THE CHOICE TO WORK AT A SMALL, ISOLATED, RURAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Central Wyoming College (CWC), with the main campus located in Riverton, Wyoming (pop. ~9000), serves Fremont, Hot Springs and Teton counties as well as the surrounding Wind River Indian Reservation. The student population of about 2000 (ages 15-90) includes on-campus (both main and outreach campuses), dual-credit (high school), and distance delivery courses. One of seven community colleges in a state with only one university, CWC provides local, national and international students with a strong foundation for transfer degrees or professional occupations; only three of these seven regularly offer geology courses. At CWC, chemistry and geology fall under one professor and geoscience majors have only been developed in the past 10 years. Having taught both chemistry and geology college courses from introductory through graduate levels, in urban and rural settings, it was a conscious choice to settle at an isolated community college. However, choosing this avenue requires a significant commitment to class time (15 credit hours/semester) rather than a large research program. CWC geoscience facilities include a multimedia classroom-laboratory, small research laboratory, specimen storage, display cabinets, a field station in the foothills 30 miles south of the main campus, and some of the best exposures of geology in the west. While classroom teaching is the main focus, undergraduate research projects from biogeochemistry to hydrogeology are supported by state and federal grants, and are supervised along with colleagues in other science fields in the department and from other institutions. Many federal grants now require outreach and collaboration with community or tribal colleges, so we have found ourselves with solid collaborations that may have been more competitive at larger institutions. However, it is a challenge to be able to properly mentor undergraduate researchers and cover four lab sections per week. Contact with geology field camps that bring their students to Wyoming, local geologists and energy field employees, geologists at the state university, membership and leadership in science organizations, attendance at national meetings, and participation in On the Cutting Edge/NAGT workshops, has created a satisfying network and assuaged the isolation of being a “lone ranger.”