TEACHING UNDERGRADUATE HYDROGEOLOGY USING AN ON-CAMPUS RESEARCH SITE: RESULTS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA GEOSCIENCES DEPARTMENT

Hydrogeology is a challenging subject to teach effectively because of the need to combine purely vocational to purely theoretical subject matter. Thus, in an undergraduate curriculum where only a single hydrogeology course is offered, or in an introductory course in a larger curriculum, a careful balance must be struck between learning the “tools of the trade” of professional hydrogeologists and the theoretical underpinnings that determine the validity of those tools. An effective means of obtaining a suitable balance is through development of a dedicated hydrogeologic field station and the continued growth and development of the site through hypothesis-driven scientific inquiry. Clearly, a field site is ideal for learning practical hydrogeologic techniques such as slug-tests, pumping tests, routine water-level measurement and many other day-to-day hydrogeologic skills. But by continuously adding wells, monitoring equipment and analysis methods as part of ongoing investigations of basic hydrologic principles, the site can also host theoretical hydrogeologic investigations and produce meaningful scientific results.

This presentation follows up on earlier work and outlines recent undergraduate student results from the University of West Georgia (UWG) Hydrogeology Research Station located in the Piedmont physiographic province in Carrollton, Georgia, USA. The site includes 3 deep bedrock wells (depths 100-180 m), more than 20 hand-augered regolith wells, a weir, a recording rain gage and miscellaneous pumping, sampling and monitoring equipment. Also available at the UWG Geosciences department are an ion chromatograph and ICP-MS instrumentation. Activities at the site form the core of an undergraduate hydrogeology course and have been the focus of numerous independent undergraduate research projects that have led to publications and presentations at professional meetings. Most importantly, students leave the course with a solid grounding in both the theoretical underpinnings of hydrogeology and in a variety of commonly used investigative techniques. Thus, they are well-prepared to pursue a career in applied hydrogeology or to study hydrogeology at the graduate level.