COURSE-EMBEDDED RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATIONS IN UNDERGRADUATE GEOLOGY MAJORS COURSES: EXAMPLES FROM THE MINERALOGY – IGNEOUS/METAMORPHIC PETROLOGY SEQUENCE AT LSU

The opportunity for all undergraduate (ug) geoscience students to obtain authentic research experiences and to learn effective communication of this research is a powerful means to establish deeper understanding of geoscience topics as well as to engage all students in the culture and practice of research. This experience, realized in the Mineralogy – Igneous/Metamorphic Petrology sequence at LSU, builds on opportunities and resources of the On the Cutting Edge program. Cutting Edge workshops have been and continue to be critical for expanding boundaries of the possible. In addition, Cutting-Edge on-line resources have been particularly useful both for faculty development and student learning.

In the required sophomore-level Mineralogy course, crystallographic and physical properties, chemical systematics and 3-D visualization of mineral frameworks are studied. As a way for these students to explore concepts, to improve spatial mapping from different images, and to put theory into practice, the LSU electron microprobe (EMP) is used to provide a research experience in Mineralogy. In small groups, students collect data on selected minerals for their chemistry, compositional zoning, and alteration, and then calculate stoichiometry. A jig-saw method is used to combine data from different teams to calculate temperatures and pressures. This experience becomes the foundation for research in the junior-level Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology course with a full-fledged course-embedded research project, the Pet Rock Project. Students follow the steps of a practicing petrologist going from megascopic to microscopic descriptions, EMP imaging and quantitative analyses of selected minerals and interpreting data to provide evidence for a coherent story for development of the selected rock. Next, students write a professional petrology-type paper and give a talk to the class. Guidelines and rubrics for both content and writing/presentation skills are provided to students to clearly establish expectations. A measureable outcome of the course embedded research opportunities is the enhanced engagement of undergraduate students in subsequent research, measured by enrollment in research specific ug courses, with geoscience faculty i.e. beginning with 16 in 2002-2004 and expanding to 145 in 2015-2017.