BUILDING A GEOLOGY PROGRAM FROM SCRATCH: DEVELOPING A FIELD BASED CAPSTONE COURSE FOR SECOND YEAR GEOLOGY STUDENTS

Located within the Boise Metropolitan Area, The College of Western Idaho is truly a community college in its infancy. Overall enrollment has grown from 1100 students during its inaugural semester (Spring 2009) to a current enrollment of around 11,000 students. This ~700% increase in enrolment has provided us with an interesting opportunity to grow a geology program from a single physical geology course to a program offering a AS in geology. From the outset, faculty have emphasized the importance of a field component in each of our course offerings. Although not all of our offered courses are required for completion of an AS degree, most students enroll in all available geology courses. At the freshman level, many of our students have completed course work in Physical, Historical, and Environmental geology as well as GIS.

Of particular interest to this session is a sophomore level course specifically focused on a series of field based projects, each representing a separate discipline within the geosciences. This course takes advantage of our location within the Snake River Plain, exposing early career geology students to multiple subdisciplines of the geosciences as well as the regional geologic context. Each project consists of a field based exercise designed to be accessible to second year students and to maximize a small course budget. Upon competition, students will have carried out investigations in surveying, bedrock geologic mapping, stream gauging, dendrochronology, volcanic stratigraphy, GPS and GIS, groundwater, and landform development. For each module, student deliverables consist of figure preparation and various forms of scientific writing, culminating in the preparation of a full geologic report.

Students leave the class with approximately 65 hours of field experience as well as an appreciation of the depth and transdisciplinary nature of the geosciences. Many students comment that prior to this course they thought geology was "mostly just about rocks". After they have finished the varied coursework it is much easier for them to understand and envision a career within the geosciences. Although at this time feedback is limited to anecdotal data, we believe that students who enter a four year program after taking this course are more prepared for upper division coursework than their academic peers.