FACULTY COLLABORATION PROVIDES EARLY UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES IN GEOSCIENCE

Early undergraduate students at Central Wyoming College (CWC), a two-year school in Riverton, Wyoming, have opportunities to participate in research projects not available to their peers at the only four-year school in the state. Thanks to generous funding sources, several students are doing research usually done by graduate-level students. These opportunities encourage students to pursue a career in science when they might have taken a different route. At the current time, we have four on-going projects, three of which are geoscience-oriented or interdisciplinary.

A long-term hydrologic study of ground and surface water in Red Canyon, 40 miles SE of Riverton, is being done in conjunction with faculty and graduate students at Syracuse University (SU). Students routinely sample surface water for chemistry and measure stream flow throughout the year. During the summer they work with SU graduate students on various specific problems.

With funding from Wyoming INBRE and Wyoming NASA Space Grant, we are studying the geochemical and microbial interactions in the Thermopolis Hot Springs, ~200 miles SE of the Yellowstone hot spot. CWC students routinely sample water for geochemistry, and microbes for community structure. We collaborate with a University of Wyoming (UW) researcher in Molecular Biology in a joint field trip in the fall that affords CWC students collaboration with UW graduate students, in characterization of the hot springs microbial community.

Wyoming NSF EPSCoR has funded research on an anomalous feature in the landscape above the CWC research station (~30 miles south of the main campus). The age of the surface deposits and the development of the extremely flat surface of Table Mountain is an enigma. Working in collaboration with a Northern Iowa University geographer who has worked in the area, has provided an excellent opportunity for our CWC students to understand the processes of landscape formation during the recent geologic history of the Wind River Basin.

Taken together, without collaboration of the experts in these fields, none of these projects would have the same impact on our students as if they were doing this research “in a vacuum.” Our students are much better prepared for success in research science or industry than those without this collaborative experience.