This is the first of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Madeleine Rushing Northern Virginia Community College Sedimentary deposition typically is seen as horizontal strata, layered one on top of the other … Read more
My Rockies field course has wrapped up for another year – the fifth year in a row I’ve run this intermediate-level ‘regional field geology’ course in collaboration with Pete Berquist of Thomas Nelson Community College. We were fortunate to be joined by two other professional geologists this year: Chris Khourey of NOVA and Tom Biggs … Read more
Previously, I’ve hinted that I was working on a top secret special project for Pearson Education. Now that the books have been published, I wanted to take a moment to discuss the details of the project. In the newest editions of both Earth: An introduction to Physical Geology (Tarbuck, Lutgens, & Tasa, 2014) and Foundations of … Read more
A quick poll: What do you think of extra credit as an option in teaching? I’m in the beginning stages of designing an online course, and because of inter-campus politics at NOVA, I’ll be co-designing it with a team of four other people, three of whom I know pretty well and totally respect. Still: one … Read more
Okay, I’ll bite. I work at making people understand more about the big rock that we live on. I use pictures and drawing on the pictures to show how the rocks have changed because of pushing on the rocks. This pushing happens because of blocks of rock that move together and sometimes push into other … Read more
Shawn at the blog Vi-carius is hosting this month’s Accretionary Wedge. He asks for a geoblogosphere-wide brainstorm on “dream geology courses” – an inspirational topic! I have a few ideas: A travel course dedicated to exploring the roots of geological thinking and the geological timescale. It would clearly need to be based in the U.K. … Read more
Callan reflects on major moments this week in his personal and professional lives.
My AGU Blogosphere neighbor Evelyn of Georneys fame is hosting this month’s Accretionary Wedge. Her topic? “Field camp memories”… I never attended a bona fide field camp myself, but I attended a lovely “regional field geology” course that my undergraduate alma mater, the College of William & Mary, put on each summer in the Colorado … Read more
A guest post by Nicholas Rossi, a student in Callan’s Canadian Rockies field course. Turtle Mountain is located in the Blairmore Range in Alberta Canada about 160km south of Calgary. It is the site of the Frank Slide, a landslide of over 90 million tons of rock that gave way on Turtle Mountain’s East side … Read more
Here’s my crew from July’s Regional Field Geology of the Canadian Rockies course, checking out the Burgess Shale at the Walcott Quarry in Yoho National Park. A couple of the locals joined us for this portrait. Original photo courtesy of Stephen Smith, modified by CB
This week, I took 20 minutes out of my day to have a conversation with a group of students… …in Canada. As you can see, our conversation was not in person, but mediated by the Internet’s video conferencing technology service called Skype. A free Skype account and a video camera allows free, easy video conversations … Read more
Last Saturday, before the rains moved in…
I did things a little differently in my latest field class, the Regional Field Geology of Eastern California. Instead of having a post-trip project (like I’ve traditionally done with my Montana/Wyoming Regional Field Geology course), I had the students complete a take-home test. I’ve just finished grading those tests, and was pleased to see the … Read more
After a roadside explanation just an hour and a half earlier on how the relationship between bedding and cleavage can reveal whether bedding is likely right-side-up or up-side-down, my students and I were walking up the road to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of California, and I saw this outcrop that … Read more
Callan has a conversation with Scott Mandia, a community college professor working on the national level to improve the public’s understanding of climate science.
Here’s the talk I gave at GSA last month: [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXt5aZIu5Xk”] It’s presented here at a slower pace than the actual talk was, since I didn’t have to run and catch a plane 45 minutes after presenting it, but there are some PowerPoint bugs with some of the animations. Oh well – recording it and … Read more
I’m on the plane home from the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, held this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This annual event features a robust smorgasbord of science, with talks and posters detailing the research efforts of thousands of geoscientists from the US and other countries. It’s an amazing experience on many, many … Read more
Our field class visited the Museum of the Rockies yesterday. Here’s the full team!
I just drew up a little checklist for the different formations my Rockies students will be seeing next starting next week out in Montana: The original black and white images (two columns on two pages) come from Self-Guided Field Trips Near Bozeman (1982), by Stephan G. Custer, Donald L. Smith, Molly Walker, and 1982’s crop … Read more
Callan gets ready for a summer of travels out in the Rocky Mountains, including teaching a field geology course, participating in a workshop about teaching energy, visiting the Burgess Shale, and… getting married!