MAKING FIELD SCIENTISTS OUT OF GEOSCIENCE NON-MAJORS: A PLACE-BASED APPROACH

Many of us who teach geoscience to non-majors develop complex pedagogy to keep our students engaged and cognizant of the geology of “place” during our lectures and/or laboratory activities. The Long Island/NYC Tri-State area is rich in geologic history but our students go from their homes to their cars to school to work. Oh, and they go to the beach sometimes.

At Nassau Community College we offer SCI203, Field and Laboratory Geology that runs for ten consecutive eleven-hour days between the end of spring term and the beginning of summer session. This is a non-majors course that is a totally experiential, active participation class but it is not a field course in the typical sense – students return home each night. We meet in the lab each morning to review the previous night’s readings, discuss the field site and what we expect to accomplish there, and how the geology of this site relates to geology of the region.

The course is divided into two sections: Long Island Geology and the Geology of the NYC/Tri-State area. Long Island is geologically very young, it dates to the end of the last glacial ice age in the area, while the geology of NYC and its environs varies in age from billions to tens of millions of years old. Long Island is glacial and sedimentary, while the NYC area is igneous and metamorphic.

The students learn to work like geologists. They make observations, use tools, and collect data that will later be processed and/or analyzed in the laboratory. While working at the field site they learn about Plate Tectonics, minerals, rocks and geologic processes. The depth of their knowledge surpasses what they would have learned in a classroom/laboratory environment. Students are assessed through their fieldwork, lab work, daily journals and two research papers.