ENGAGING COMMUNITY COLLEGE GEOLOGY STUDENTS IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM WITH PROBLEM SOLVING LABORATORIES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR EARLY UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH WITH MINIMAL EQUIPMENT AND BUDGET

At Delaware County Community College, we have scheduled the geology classes for 2 hours on Mondays and Wednesdays and 1 hour on Fridays instead of a separate laboratory meeting. This gives us the ability to do more laboratory activities. The students are encouraged not to state the reading for the first three weeks of the semester. We then do several problem-based activities by starting with mapping of earthquake epicenters, exploring the location and depths of the earthquake foci and location of volcanoes that leads the students to point out the connection to plate tectonics without any introduction or background. Instead of lecturing on earthquakes and plate tectonics, this method guides the students to see how scientists think and how science works and to understand how scientist developed the theory of plate tectonics and the relationship to earthquakes and volcanic activity. By have the students looking at data and maps then figure out the geologic processes, with guidance, allow them to have the ah-ha moment of discovery. This keeps the students involved and interested more so than just lectures followed by a lab that they already know the answers too.

For the science majors and interested non-major we do outside of class an option honor research project. Since students do not have a scheduled class on the second hour of the Friday class block, we can meet to work on their honor project. At the community college there is little funding equipment and travel, we have created an assortment of mini project that the student can do a semester projects. Some examples of past project include drilling and extracting fluid from fluid filled agates, GPS Mapping, Mapping projects in ArcGIS and ArcScene, Sediment and soil studies. This gives the students in introduction to research in there early in the studies.