HR: 1330h
AN: ED12A-0121    [PDF]
TI: Renovating the Curriculum from the Ground Up
AU: * Clark, J J
EM: clarkj@lawrence.edu
AF: Lawrence University, 115 S. Drew Street, Appleton, WI 54911 United States
AU: Bjornerud, M
EM: bjornerm@lawrence.edu
AF: Lawrence University, 115 S. Drew Street, Appleton, WI 54911 United States
AB: The geology department at Lawrence University has entirely recreated itself in the past seven years, with three new faculty members, a new curriculum, and new facilities. Although the magnitude and rapidity of these changes have posed challenges, the opportunity to build the department almost entirely from scratch has allowed us to design a program that acknowledges the profound changes that have occurred within the geosciences in the past few decades. The major challenge that we(and many other programs) faced was how to offer a curriculum that reflects the diversity of the geosciences with a relatively small faculty. We addressed this issue by identifying our priorities, strengths, potentials, and limitations, and building the strongest possible curriculum given these resources and constraints. As new faculty members were hired, we deliberately sought out versatile, flexible candidates whose training embraced several subdisciplines. The primary interests of the three current faculty members are 1) mid- to deep crustal `hard rock' geology, 2) physical surficial processes, and 3) the geochemistry of near-surface rocks and waters. This combination allows us to span a large intellectual space, but it would be difficult to offer all of the traditional courses in the geology canon. As we discussed the skills and concepts we considered for geology students and assessed the expertise of our faculty, we concluded that for us the most efficient curricular framework would emphasize 1) Earth processes (rather than entities) and 2) connections with cognate sciences(especially chemistry and physics). This shift in focus has also allowed us to serve the interdisciplinary Environmental studies curriculum in an integral way, without undercutting the department's own mission. Anecdotal evidence has shown that this approach is successful. Not only do more physics and chemistry students take our courses, but a number of them go on to minor or double major in geology. We've found also that a number of environmental studies students are taking our upper-level courses which not only helps bolster enrollment, but also exposes more students to the geosciences. Moreover, many of our majors that move on to graduate programs do so in interdisciplinary programs (e.g., geochemistry, geophysics, biogeochemistry, environmental sciences, science writing, science education). While our wholesale personnel changes allowed us unusual flexibility in redesigning our program, we feel that departments at other institutions - large and small - could benefit from a similar self-assessment. As the scope of the geosciences grows and the boundaries between disciplines become less sharp, there is no longer any possibility of `comprehensive coverage' in the undergraduate curriculum (if indeed this ever was possible). We do not consider our curriculum a universally applicable template. But we do believe that the strongest geoscience programs will emerge in departments that know their strengths and build curricula from these intellectual centers of gravity.
DE: 9800 GENERAL OR MISCELLANEOUS
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting