INTEGRATING STRUCTURE, STRATIGRAPHY AND TECTONICS IN UNDERGRADUATE BA AND BS CURRICULA

Traditionally, undergraduate geology courses like stratigraphy and structure are tightly discipline focused. For a stratigrapher structural data is “noise”, while students on a structure field trip examine rocks from a rheological viewpoint. This is a false dichotomy; the tectonic stresses that create depositional basins are the same ones that produce strains we interpret as geologic structures. Beginning in 2008 the James Madison University Department of Geology and Environmental Science revised the BA program, and we introduced a course titled Stratigraphy, Structure, and Tectonics (SST) that was designed to combine stratigraphy, structure, and tectonics topics into one integrated course. The first organizing motif for the course is ”no rock is accidental”; geoscientists must be prepared to gather all the information available from an outcrop, without discipline blinders. The second organizing motif is “follow the energy” connoting that every observable feature is the result of energy dissipation, and our intent must be to deduce energy transfer from the many signatures in the rock.

The pedagogic strategy is an interplay between classroom-developed, top-down deductive theoretical models, and bottom-up inductive field experiences. These two threads are woven together in a semester long project whose goal is an examination of how stratigraphic, structural and tectonic principles have produced the regional geology of western Virginia and eastern West Virginia. In four field trips we visit ~60 outcrops along two transects running from the Blue Ridge Province, across the Valley and Ridge, to the Allegheny Front. Each outcrop is examined structurally, stratigraphically, and tectonically, with continuous discussions on how tectonics have evolved throughout the geologic history we deduce from evidence in the rocks.

Early in the development of SST the instructors began to realize that the new integrative models and approaches developed for the course were being incorporated into the traditional stratigraphy and structural geology courses being taught in the BS degree. This resulted in the development of a second semester ASST (Advanced Structure, Stratigraphy, and Tectonics) course, and SST and ASST have now replaced stratigraphy and structure as core courses in the BA and BS degree programs.