Field Geology Education: Historical Perspectives and Modern Approaches (GSA Special Paper 461)
- نوع فایل : کتاب
- زبان : انگلیسی
- نویسنده : Steven J. Whitmeyer
Description
Field education has historically occupied a central role in undergraduate geoscience curricula, often starting with class specific weekend field trips and progressing to a capstone summer field course or “camp” at the conclusion of undergraduate coursework. Over the past century, countless geoscience students have honed their field credentials through immersion in the techniques of geologic field mapping as part of a six to eight-week summer field course. Traditionally, field camp has been required for graduation by many college geoscience departments, and nearly 100 field camps are currently offered by accredited American universities and colleges (King, 2009). However, many geoscience programs in the past few decades have moved away from traditional geologic fieldwork (e.g., bedrock mapping and stratigraphic analysis) and toward applied geology (geophysical remote sensing, laboratory based geochemical analyses, and environmental assessment, to highlight a few examples). As a result, many geoscience programs have questioned the importance of fi eld instruction in the undergraduate curriculum (Drummond, 2001; AGI, 2006). This volume resulted from a cascade of meetings, field forums, and conference sessions that focused on the supposed decline of the importance of field geology, and the apparent erosion of field experience in recently graduated geoscience students, as perceived by many professionals.
