INCREASING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND RECRUITMENT THROUGH MODIFICATION AND ADAPTATION OF TRADITIONAL SERVICE FIELD TRIPS

Weekend field trips away from the Gulf Coastal Plain of East Texas are a time-honored tradition for the Department of Geology at Stephen F. Austin State University. Each semester students explore the regional geology of the Llano uplift of central Texas or the Ouachita Mountains and Arkansas Alkalic Province on our Hill Country or Arkansas field trips, respectively. These camping trips are four-day, two-credit service courses open without prerequisites to all undergraduate students. Historically, these trips successfully recruited students to the Geology program, but limits on undergraduate hours (Texas Education Code § 54.014) now ensure that course participants are dominantly juniors and seniors in established majors. We are revising these service courses in order to improve student engagement, and adapting the courses to a new format to restore their effectiveness as recruitment tools.

Weekend field trips have had a traditional format: students visit multiple locations each day, take notes, and collect samples; notebooks and sample collections are graded. We have modified this format by 1) introducing course themes, 2) developing workbooks, and 3) instituting a photo-based field report. Course themes (e.g., “Earth’s Resources” or “Geologic Time”) allow us create a focused experience for non-geoscientists. Workbooks contain reference information and space for notes, shifting the focus from passive note taking to exploring materials and processes. Students may take creative approaches to the field report, while still allowing us to assess their understanding of the regional geology and course theme.

By Fall 2019, we intend to offer these field trips as special sections of our Introductory Geology (GOL 131) and Fundamentals of Earth Science (GOL 101) courses. Students will participate in a week-long field trip rather than weekly labs. Field trip stops will become active, field-based assignments that mix traditional introductory level lab skills with fundamental field and research skills. These unique laboratories will be open to all students as part of the University’s mission to offer transformative experiences to undergraduates; declared Geology majors will be encouraged to register for these sections in order to begin their field-based geoscience education.