GEOLITERACY: TEACHING EARLY CAREER STUDENTS TO READ, WRITE, AND THINK LIKE GEOLOGISTS

Undergraduate geology students need to learn geologic content knowledge, theory and analytical skills. But to succeed in their future careers, they also need to learn one other thing –how to be geologists. GEOL 260: Geoliteracy is a sophomore-level course for geology majors and minors that introduces students to the professional infrastructure of geology. Through experiential exercises, students learn how to access the geologic literature, how to write for different audiences, how to apply to graduate school, how to apply for grants, and how to find and apply for jobs. Many undergraduate programs offer courses like this to senior students to prepare them for life beyond college. However, the Westminster College Geology program recommends Geoliteracy to freshman and sophomore students because the skills that students learn in this course are robustly useful during their college years.

Our program is currently four years old, and we offered Geoliteracy for the first time in the Spring of 2017. As a result, our first cohort to go through the class included a cross-section of students from freshmen to seniors. Formal assessments, as well as informal conversations, indicate that students not only met the learning goals we set for them, but appreciated the value of the skills they gained. Senior students in the first cohort specifically said they wished the course had been available to them in their first or second years of college. Here we provide an overview of Geoliteracy, including the course learning objectives, how those objectives fit into our larger curriculum, and some of the exercises we use to help students meet those objectives.