ON THE CUTTING EDGE AS THE SOURCE OF AN EXPANDING WAVE OF BENEFIT

The impact of a good idea can spread in many felicitous ways. The "On The Cutting Edge " [OCE] workshop on Teaching Quantitative Skills in a Geoscience Context (2004) led to new physical geology labs at UW-Milwaukee and development of a lab manual that embraced use of quantitative work: measurement, computation, graphing, and inference from trends in data. Several elements of these hands-on labs are used in the 11th edition of the AGI/NAGT Laboratory Manual in Physical Geology.

At the first OCE workshop on Teaching Structural Geology in the 21st Century (2004), I offered a mini-workshop on the use of earthquake focal mechanisms in structural geology, which led to development of a widely-used primer that is available through the SERC website. The effort to create a related activity for structure labs resulted in development of the Seismo-Lineament Analysis Method [SLAM] for spatially correlating an earthquake with the ground trace of the fault that generated it. SLAM is now used routinely in neotectonic research to identify seismogenic faults.

A working group at the structural-geology workshop was challenged to find ways for undergraduate students to work with EarthScope data -- "taking a sip from the fire hose." In collaboration with UNAVCO, we developed modules to enable students to access GPS velocity data from the Plate Boundary Observatory [PBO] and use those data to determine present-day crustal motion and horizontal strain between PBO sites. This practical application of infinitesimal strain theory helps students develop quantitative skills involving vectors and matrices. The initial UNAVCO modules evolved into an extensive new InTeGrate resource available through SERC.

The GeoEthics workshop (2014) co-sponsored by OCE has facilitated the growth of an international community interested in promoting personal, professional, and research ethics in the geosciences and, more broadly, in educating us all about the existential need for us to be effective stewards of our planet.

The OCE workshops and the communities that have evolved around them have had a transformative influence on geoscience education. The friendships and productive collaborations that have evolved in the SERC ecosystem, beginning with OCE workshops, have been a personal and intellectual delight.