SIZE DOESN'T MATTER: DESIGNING UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECTS ON THE BASIS OF STUDENT ABILITY AND AVAILABILITY

One of the most challenging issues when working with undergraduate students in a directed research capacity is designing specific projects for specific students. This is made all the more difficult when an interested student approaches a mentor before they have a thorough appreciation of all courses in the geology program. A student that elects to do a study in sedimentology may later regret this decision if they come to learn that their preferred area of interest was actually geophysics or paleontology. Additional impediments arise from student workload which requires adjusting the scope of the study to fit within other classes taken during the semester(s) of research, and the usual annoyances that typically accompany ALL research projects like weather delays, access issues and equipment malfunctions. In some situations, the credit value of the research may have to be adjusted upward or downward, or the work may have to be carried over to subsequent semesters. Despite these complications, rewarding research opportunities for both the student and the mentor are possible, provided that the study outcomes remain somewhat flexible. In this study, we report on a student research project that was originally designed to examine the geochemistry of inorganically precipitated calcite in an industrial tailings pond, but due to cancelled support, conflicts with field school scheduling, and the demise of thin-sectioning equipment and a cathodoluminoscope, ended up a very successful petrographic study of carbonate minerals deposited during a snowball Earth cycle some 700 million years ago in what is today Namibia. The Neoproterozoic samples that were examined were largely devoid of any fabric, especially at the microscopic level. This is likely a result of post depositional alteration; specifically dolomitization.