Volume 13, Issue 2| Spring 2024
Foundations
NEWSLETTER OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GEOSCIENCE TEACHERS GEO2YC DIVISION
![[creative commons]](/images/creativecommons_16.png)
In this Issue:
- President's Column
- Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award
- The power of social media for science communication
- Don't forget STEMSEAS opportunities for students!
- Need some summer reading?
- NAGT updates
- Deadlines for funding opportunities for 2YC faculty and students
- Upcoming meetings - EER, GSA, AGU, and Fireside Chats
- Field Notes with students
- Geo2YC pencils
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Cheryl Resnick at Cannon Beach![[reuse info]](/images/information_16.png)
President's Column
Cheryl Resnick, Illinois Central College
Summer is here and at the time I'm writing this column, we're living the "Tale of Two Cities". It's not the 1700's French Revolution but instead, the tale of two Great Falls: Great Falls, Virginia and Great Falls, Montana. On this day, Great Falls, Virginia is sweating through a high of 92oF while Great Falls, Montana is at a record-breaking cold 45oF. No matter where you live, you're likely experiencing some extreme form of weather affecting your summer recreation, field work, or home activities. It leads me to reflect on the important role we have in improving our students' climate literacy. Luckily, we have resources available to us, such as the CLEAN Climate Teaching Resources Collection and our very own Earth Educators Rendezvous (EER). This summer's EER runs July 15-19 in Philadelphia and offers multiple sessions focused on teaching climate change with storylines and atmospheric data. EER is a great opportunity to connect with other geoscience educators and share ideas, problem solve, and to get energized for the coming academic year - and registration is still open! I'd also like to extend an invitation to all Geo2YC Division members attending EER to join in the Geo2YC Social starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant on Thursday, July 18. Don't forget another opportunity to learn new approaches to student learning - the annual GSA meeting in Anaheim this fall. Geo2YC has professional development grants that can help with travel expenses. The next application deadline is September 15.
As we see the new academic year on the horizon, let's look to expand our impact both on our students and each other. If we can't travel to conferences, we can share ideas through our experiences. One great resource is the Volume 2022 Issue 199 edition of New Directions for Community Colleges: Catalyzing Change: STEM Faculty As Change Agents. Most of the articles are written by 2YC faculty with experience on a wide range of topics and most of the articles are now open access. Another opportunity for sharing ideas is our Geo2YC "Fireside Chats" series. This year's inaugural "Fireside Chats" was a huge success with participants from Washington, California, North Dakota, Illinois, Virginia, New York, Colorado, Michigan, and North Carolina. What a wealth of ideas and experiences we shared! At one of the first meetings, I learned about starting the semester with a "Tip Jar." A student would pull out a tip to read to the class each day about being successful. At the end of the semester, students add their own tips to the jar. I'm definitely trying this idea! We hope you will join us for the continuation of this series in the fall. If you have a topic you would like to submit for discussion, email me (cresnick@icc.edu) with your thoughts.
We look forward to learning from and supporting you as we continue on our STEM educational journeys. You are all rock (and atmospheric, and oceanographic, and astronomic) stars!
Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award
Spring 2024 Honoree:
Savannah Reed, Centralia College
Joy Branlund, Northeastern Junior College
Savannah feels passionately about the power of online instruction, and wants to ensure robust STEM classes are available to students who cannot attend classes on campus. Towards this end, she created the first fully-online section of Survey of the Earth Sciences for Centralia last fall, and has been teaching it ever since.
Savannah strives to make the course engaging and relevant to all students. She elicits genuine student-faculty discourse from her online students by demonstrating her excitement for the course material, being accessible, and working with and accommodating students.
To help students connect with and learn material, Savannah created several new hands-on activities. These include determining viscosities of common household liquids in order to better understand volcanism, and making simple models with containers, rocks, and ice to determine effects of melting sea ice and glaciers on sea level. She monitors student perceptions with surveys and tweaks her curricula as needed.
Savannah also serves as the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Association for Women Geoscientists, and recently gave a webinar to help other new geoscience professionals progress in their careers.
A career in higher education is challenging as a military wife, but Savannah hopes to continue teaching geoscience, increase the accessibility of the geoscience curriculum, and even advance her own education.
Savannah, we are grateful for all you do for our field, your college and your students! We are pleased to support Savannah with a one-year complimentary membership to the NAGT Geo2YC Division, and she will be entered into the pool of honorees under consideration for the Annual Outstanding Faculty Award, which is sponsored by a professional development stipend of up to $1000 from McGraw-Hill.
To our readership—tell us about yourself or your adjunct colleagues! What wonderful ideas and strategies are you bringing to your corners of the geoscience world? Note, these colleagues DO NOT have to be current members of NAGT or the Geo2YC Division to be recognized. Please complete an Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award nomination today.
The power of social media in communicating real-time geoscience: an educator's view of Icelandic eruptions
Shawn Willsey, College of Southern Idaho
The reaction was swift, powerful and positive, with the video getting considerable attention and views from folks around the world who enjoyed watching and learning along with me. As the magmatic signals became stronger, threatening the nearby infrastructure, media outlets picked up on the story, but few lacked the ability to clearly and fully articulate the data and possible outcomes. Armed with geology knowledge and having experienced, in part, the 2018 Lower East Rift Zone eruption, I used my classroom teaching skills and the power of the internet to educate a large audience, including many Icelanders who were understandably concerned. The situation reached a head on November 10, when a large swarm of earthquakes rattled and damaged Grindavik, resulting in the entire evacuation of the town on a single evening. The quakes were caused by a 15-km long intrusion that developed east of the magma storage zone, partially exploiting pre-existing faults and fractures from the last eruption in the area some 800 years ago.
After several weeks of unrest and uncertainty, a series of fissure eruptions north of Grindavik commenced on Dec 18, Jan 14, Feb 8, Mar 16, and, most recently, May 29. Throughout this period, I regularly provided updates several times a week and used the situation as fodder for classroom discussions in both online and face-to-face courses. For my Natural Disasters course, the whole ordeal in Iceland drove home the relevance of the course content, providing an exceptional case study of a "slow motion" disaster with no known end in sight and a slew of difficult public safety decisions.
As luck would have it, a company called NatureEye contacted me in December and was interested in collaborating. They had developed the ability to remotely operate drones and wanted me to fly a drone over this part of Iceland during and between eruptions. The partnership couldn't have been better as it allowed me and my viewers to observe more of the eruptive dynamics than what the fixed webcams offered. These flights were livestreamed to my YouTube channel and essentially became valuable educational experiences for all as we collectively observed and interpreted the volcanic activity and changing landscape.
Today, I continue to actively monitor the situation in Iceland. I also just returned from leading a week-long trip with my college students and, later, a group of interested YouTube viewers. The experience has been incredibly rewarding, exposing me to a vast audience of folks genuinely interested in geology along with great opportunities to teach and share. If you are interested, you can check out these and other geology education exploits at my YouTube channel.
Oceanography field opportunities for 2YC students
Book reviews: Fossil Woman series by Sharon Lyon
Karen M. Layou, Reynolds Community College
This is an abridged version of a review first published in the Bulletin of the Eastern Section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers newsletter (Volume 72, issue 4; Winter 2022).
In her debut novel, Fossil Woman, Sharon Lyon weaves multiple timelines into a wonderfully familiar experience of the fledgling career of a female paleontologist, Henrietta Ballantine. While shifting through Henrietta's childhood studying in the halls of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History under her father's tutelage, her undergraduate experiences at the College of William and Mary in the late 1950s, and fieldwork in the world-renowned Olduvai Gorge, we follow Henrietta's becoming; she establishes her female presence in a scientific community that was traditionally a man's world. Clearly referencing her own educational experiences, Lyon captures intricate details of geology undergraduate coursework - I had to chuckle at Henrietta's boredom with stereonets (same, girl, same!). Lyon is definitely a geoscientist who has seen a lot of rocks – her descriptions of Henrietta's travels across North America and Africa, noting iconic landscapes, key geologic formations, and important index fossils are lovely, and made me reminisce about my own undergraduate field camp excursions. I also related to Henrietta's geologic experiences relating to a sense of belonging and relationship to both her human past and personal future. Definitely worth a read.
In Book 2 of the Fossil Woman series, we pick up Dr. Henrietta Ballantine's story in the remote oil fields of western North Dakota. Author Sharon Lyon creates an engaging tale packed with geologic details (badlands erosion, fossil prep techniques, resistivity logs) that are fun to read in the context of an adventure novel. Henrietta follows her new husband, Frank Bailey, to his new job with Monroe Petroleum out on the prairie. Leaving behind her own paleobotany research career for the sake of her marriage, Henrietta must find ways to keep her mind busy in the most rural of landscapes. She becomes acquainted with a Native American used-book seller, endures awkward social obligations as Mrs. Frank Bailey, and ultimately finds solace preparing specimens in the paleo lab at the Dickerson History Museum. When she is offered the job as camp cook on a Hell Creek Formation fossil dig for the museum, Henrietta negotiates like the professional woman she is, to a position of 80% digging, 20% cooking - and the (otherwise all male) crew makes their own lunch! The dig ends up testing Henrietta - physically and ethically - leading to an exciting conclusion to the book. It's not common to see academic female geoscientists as protagonists, and that is what makes this series so enjoyable to read. The geologic and other scientific references (polar vortexes showed up in force for Henrietta), exploration of academic versus industry careers, dance of work-life balance, and workplace gender dynamics are all deeply relatable. There are some hints that Henrietta will end up in New Orleans next...I look forward to catching up with her there.
Grow your NAGT experience
NAGT Webinar Committee is looking for webinar hosts
NAGT offers a wide range of webinars each month to bring the latest in geoscience and pedagogy to our members. The NAGT Webinar Committee is looking for members who would be willing to host a webinar this coming academic year. Consider sharing a fun teaching technique, resources you've used in your classroom, or collaborate with colleagues to tell us more about what's been going on in your professional world. If you have some ideas, please reach out to the current chair, Adrianne Leinbach (aaleinbach@waketech.edu).
Voting for NAGT officers ends next week!
Please be sure to complete your ballot for 2024 NAGT officers by Wednesday, July 3! You'll be voting for the national officers as well as the Geo2YC Division Vice-President.
Funding opportunities this fall
Never been to AGU? Here's your chance, first-time attendees - check out this new travel funding support for 2YC faculty - due July 8!
This funding is expressly for faculty from Emerging Research Institutions (ERIs), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and community colleges (2YCs). Check it out and apply today!
Apply for a Geo2YC Faculty Development Grant! Next deadline is September 15.
Open to members of the Geo2YC Division of NAGT, the Geo2YC Faculty Development Grant offers mini-grants up to $500 to support an activity (workshop, field trip, etc.) which benefits faculty from multiple institutions and travel grants of $100 to support attending professional development activities. If you plan on attending GSA or AGU this fall, this is a chance to get a bit of support! Rolling deadlines annually on April 15 and September 15. Apply here.
Plan ahead for next year - 2YC faculty, K-12 teachers, and 2YC students: please consider applying for the Dorothy Stout Grant! Annual deadline is April 15.
In honor of Dottie Stout, the first female president of NAGT, awards are made annually in three categories: Community College Faculty, Community College Student, and K-12 Educator. The awards support participation in Earth science classes or workshops; attendance at professional meetings; participation in Earth science field trips; and/or purchase of Earth science materials for classroom use. In addition to the $750 award, each winner receives a one-year membership to NAGT. Apply here.
Connect with your colleagues!
NAGT Webinar Series
Check out the schedule for the NAGT Webinar Series! Lots of great opportunities for learning and discussion through these events, and even if you cannot attend, you can register so the link to the recording is sent straight to your inbox. An archive of prior webinars is also available.
Earth Educators' Rendezvous, Philadelphia, PA July 15-19, 2024
The Earth Educators' Rendezvous is quickly approaching, but it's not too late to register. Consider attending this summer as the meeting will be shifting to an every-other-year schedule, so the next EER will be in 2026. Visit their website for more details and to participate in this fantastic event that brings Earth educators together.
All Geo2YC Division members attending EER are invited to the Geo2YC Social starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant on Thursday, July 18. See the EER program for more information.
Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA September 22-25, 2024 - Early registration deadline is July 31
We hope to see you this fall at GSA Connects 2024. Check out the following Technical Sessions sponsored by NAGT and its Divisions:
- T68. Geoscience Research Posters by 2YC and 4YCU Undergraduate Students
- T69. Making Sense of Methodologies and Theoretical Frameworks in Geoscience Education Research
- T70. Iris Moreno Totten Research in Geoscience Education Session
- T74. Current Advances in Geoscience Education Research
Don't forget to also check out this field trip by NAGT members for educators!
- 403. An Educator's Look at Southern California Geology (runs Thursday, Sept 19 - Saturday, Sept 21)
AGU Chapman Conferences
Keep AGU Chapman Conferences on your radar for in-depth meetings on key topics that impact the geosciences. See the Chapman Conference website for 2024-25 offerings
Geo2YC Fireside Chats
What a success! Thanks to all Geo2YC Division members that came out last Spring to one of our virtual monthly Fireside Chats. These informal Zoom conversations were a lovely way to engage with colleagues across the country, chat about current issues we face in our teaching experiences, and definitely share some laughs. Stay tuned to your email in August/September when we'll announce dates, times, and topics for upcoming discussions this fall. Remember - all are welcome, so this is a great way to encourage your colleagues and adjuncts who may not yet be NAGT members to get involved.
Send us your Field Notes
We want to hear about and see what you are doing with your students in the field. Please share pictures of students in the field and a brief description of what they are doing.
Illinois Central College geoscience students took to the field with professor Cheryl Resnick at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. Students were able to examine Paleozoic sedimentary rocks and fossils, including the Ordovician-aged Platteville Dolostone and St. Peters Sandstone which contains 3rd generation quartz sand, cross-bedding, and soft-sediment deformation (behind students in left photo.)
Where in the world are NAGT Geo2YC pencils?
Send us your pencil pictures to share in the newsletter.