LOCAL RESEARCH PROJECTS FOSTER STUDENT LEARNING IN A GROWING UNDERGRADUATE DEPARTMENT

In the past four years, the Bowdoin College geoscience department has grown from a Geology department with three faculty and an average of 7 majors to an Earth and Oceanographic Science department with six faculty and 28 graduating majors. The departmental growth is a result of a revised curriculum that leverages the college’s coastal Maine location, incorporates authentic research by students, and features an earth system science approach. The new curriculum includes: 1) multiple introductory courses with different foci (e.g. solid earth, environmental geology, oceans), 2) an integrative 200-level course in biogeochemistry, 3) a suite of 200-level courses that expose students to the breadth of earth system science, 4) a 300-level research-project course, and 5) a capstone seminar.

A key feature of the curriculum is the incorporation of authentic research into introductory and advanced courses. For example, in the introductory courses students investigate local rocks by collecting field data and by using the petrographic and scanning electron microscopes (solid earth course), conduct service-learning projects using real-time water-quality and stream-flow data (environmental geology course), or use MatLab to visualize data they collect from ships in local coastal waters (oceans course). In the required 200-level biogeochemistry course, students design their own project by applying analytical techniques introduced in the course, e.g. using nutrient spectrophotometry to analyze local soil or water samples they collect. Upper level courses continue the practice of research; for example, in the upper-level oceanography courses, students model circulation in the Gulf of Maine, investigate lowered dissolved oxygen levels in Casco Bay, or study Harmful Algal Bloom dynamics using data obtained from the college’s real-time oceanographic mooring. Finally, in the 300-level research-project course, students propose, conduct, trouble-shoot, and present a mineral-based research project. As a result of participating in research projects throughout the curriculum, students graduate from the department skilled in a variety of observational and analytical techniques, practiced in the process of science, and familiar with how the earth’s systems operate in the local area.