INTRODUCING STUDENTS TO THE WORK OF LOCAL GEOLOGISTS AT THE GEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF NEW JERSEY ANNUAL MEETING

An opportunity arose to include the 2019 fall annual meeting and field trip of the Geological Association of New Jersey in the curriculum for my Marine Geology class. This class is an elective in the Earth and Environmental Science BS, for students who have completed courses in sedimentology and oceanography, and so this was an ideal time to introduce them to students from nearby colleges, as well as professionals in the field. The fact that the topic of the conference, “Geology and Paleontology of Monmouth County, New Jersey” fit directly into the students’ lab study of the New Jersey passive margin was fortuitous. Prior to the meeting, students had received a lecture on passive margin sedimentation and coastal processes, and had started work on a lab exercise interpreting seismic sections and borehole data from Ocean Drilling Program leg 150, “New Jersey Continental Slope and Rise”. Talks at the conference introduced the lithologies of the area and included several presentations on the paleontology of the marine organisms living on the shelf during the Cretaceous. This was a good introduction to the field trip, in which we discovered the lithologies in the field, and had ample opportunity to collect fossils. On returning to campus, the students were tasked with synthesizing data from their lab work with the information from the field trip. Lithologies were similar, but of different ages. The field trip also included a transect through a channel, which directly corresponded to the structures the students had identified in the seismic sections. While I would have taken the students on a similar field trip to complete their passive margin project, the experience was definitely enhanced by having the trip led by people conducting research in this area. The students also learned a lot from hearing the questions asked by professional geologists, and the fact that none of us “know it all” seemed to surprise some. The experience showed that we are all continuing to learn and that the collaboration and discussion in a local group meeting such as this can be a great way of generating new ideas.