This is a photo of me (Kurt Friehauf) which I animated so the ears wiggle up and down. Clicking on this picture will direct you to my main webpage.Kurt Friehauf - Teaching

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree.

- Martin Luther

Contents

Courses taught

Photo of three students in my mineralogy in an underground zinc mine. The walls of the tunnel are slanted because the miners only dug ore-bearing rock and not the surrounding stone. Field trips are a great way to learn because experiencing geology helps build a longer-lasting understanding than one gets from just reading books. Click this image to see more photos of students on my mineralogy class field trips.
Mineralogy + Lab
How to identify minerals and the chemistry of how minerals form
(photo: Sterling Hill zinc mine)
 Photo of me kneeling by a vertical rock face, pointing out some squiggles where the rock partially melted and was then folded. I'm holding a white dry-erase board in my hand that I use on field trips to draw sketches. Click this image to see more photos of field trips in my Petrology and Geochemistry class.
Petrology and Geochemistry + Lab
(formerly Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology)
Studying the chemical processes that form, modify, and destroy rocks, including how magmas form/crystallize, how pressure/temperature recrystallize rocks, and how water chemically reacts with rocks.
(photo: Adirondack Mnts.)
 Photo of Max making geologic sketches of outcrops in his field book. Making sketches of outcrops is important because one must make observations before one can draw. Geologists, like most other scientists, must make careful observations. Click this photo to see more photos from my Field Geology course.
Field Geology
Standard field procedures for geologists, including geologic mapping, rock/soil/water sampling, geophysical methods, etc.
(photo: sketching outcrops with
the art education students)
(taught alternating years with Dr. Sarah Tindall )
Photo of my class underground at the Balmat Zinc Mine in 2006. We're all wearing head lamps on our hard hats, and have respirators dangling from around our necks. This is one of my favorite mines because the geology is fascinating and the geologists working at the mine are very sharp folks! Click here for photos of my economic geology class field trips.
Economic Geology + Lab
How mineral deposits that we mine form within the Earth and how we explore for them
(photo: underground in the Balmat zinc mine)
 Photo of my Physical Geology class on a field trip to the local cement plant. Tara is looking through a hand-held filter into the open end of a giant rotary kiln. The rotary kiln is a 20 ft tube in which limestone is heated to very high temperature to make cement. The tube rotates to stir the broken rock during heating. Click here to see photos from my physical geology class field trips.
Physical Geology + Lab
Survey of the geological sciences for science majors.
(photo: viewing kiln at cement plant)		 Photo of me standing on the edge of a deep canyon in desert sandstone. An 800 foot tall spindle of rock called Spider Rock juts up in the middle of Canyon de Chelly National Monument. I teach a course about the Geology of National Parks.
Geology of National Parks
The stories of the rocks that you walk on when you go on vacation
(photo: Canyon de Chelly, AZ)
Photo of students in my Senior Seminar class measuring the composition of groundwater in a monitoring well. A steel pipe about the diameter of a human leg sticks out of the ground. The students are holding a coil of cable that feeds down into the hole. The chemical composition readout is displayed on a little box resembling a calculator. I know seminars are supposed to be when we just sit around and talk, but this is GEOLOGY! Click here for photos from Senior Seminar.
Senior Seminar in Geology
Synthesis of all of the geology courses in the program through discussions of papers published in the professional scientific journals, also includes group research project
(photo: measuring pH, etc. in well)
 Photo of students taking a soil sample using an auger. On student is writing notes in a field notebook, another is hoding a plastic sample bag under the coils of the soil auger that the third student has just pulled from the ground. My Environmental Geology class went on field trips to get first-hand experience measuring the environment. Click here for photos from my Environmental Geology class.
Environmental Geology + Lab
Geology related to environmental science with an emphasis on practical experience in the field
(photo: soil sampling near Palmerton, PA)
(taught by Dr. Jacob Sewall as of 2009)
 		Photo of students standing in front of a large rock drilling machine with hoses and cables going every which way. We're dressed in warm clothing because it's early spring. Click here for photos from my Optical Mineralogy class.
Optical Mineralogy + Lab
Using microscopes to study mineralogy and applying a little mineral chemistry to deduce geological processes
(photo: Nyco wollastonite mine)
Photo of students measuring the depth to the water table in a monitoring well. A bright orange pipe sticks out of the ground about hip high. The students have lowered a special cable into the hole. When the little device at the end of the cable touches water, the instrument beeps. Click here for photos of my Hydrogeology class.
Hydrogeology + Lab
Geology related to environmental science with an emphasis on practical experience in the field
(photo: bailing from monitoring well)
(taught by Dr. Laura Sherrod as of 2010)
 Photo of students in the autumn forest using geophysical instruments to measure the intensity of the Earth's magnetic field over different parts of an old iron mine. One student holds a calculator-like instrument with the readout. A second student holds a six foot long pole with a canister on top that measures the magnetic field. Two more students record the data. Geophysics
Geophysics + Lab
How we analyze the earth's magnetism, gravity, electrical properties, and seismic properties to find hidden things like water, oil, and minerals, as well as understand processes otherwise invisible to us
(photo: measuring magnetic field in Pennsylvania iron mining district)
(taught by Dr. Laura Sherrod as of 2010)
Photo of students and a professional geologist looking at drill core beside a drill rig. The drill core is a tube of rock about as thick as a person's wrist. The cylinder of rock is organized in rows in the three foot long wooden box. The rock-drilling truck in the background is taking new core. Students are actively asking questions. Click here for photos from my Structural Geology class.
Structural Geology + Lab
Studying how stress deforms rock to form folds and faults, how that applies to engineering, and plate tectonic theory
(photo: measuring RQD in drill core at drill rig testing rock strength)
(taught by Dr. Sarah Tindall as of 2003)
Image of a geologic map of Pennsylvania. Different colors on the map indicate where different types of rocks are located.
Intro to Geology + Lab
Survey of the geological sciences for science and non-science majors, respectively		 Photo of a rock climber on smooth sandstone. I replaced the head of the climber with a photo of William Shakespeare. This photo is just an icon of a course I taught called Shakespeare and Schist - Reading that Rocks!
Reading that Rocks - Geology in Literature
a.k.a., Shakespeare and Schist
summer workshop with Dr. Jennifer Forsyth investigating how our view of earth processes has changed as recorded in literature.		 Photo of eight students scrambling over platey broken shale on an old mine dump. The students are looking for fossils of fern fronds deposited approximately 300 million years ago. This photo is just an icon for a course I taught one summer for middle school teachers titled Mineral deposits of the Mid-Atlantic Region
Mineral deposits of the
Mid-Atlantic Region
summer workshop with Dr. Ed Simpson exploring collectible minerals in eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey
(photo: collecting fern fossils)

Travels with students - the world is bigger than Kutztown, Pennsylvania!

Longer trips
Adirondacks - Autumn 2013
Adirondacks - Autumn 2012
Adirondacks - Autumn 2011
Namibia - Summer 2011
Alaska - Summer 2011
Adirondacks - Autumn 2010
Arizona - March 2010 (Grand Canyon, volcanoes, meteorite impact site, Petrified Forest, and copper mines)
Adirondacks - Autumn 2009
Colorado/New Mexico - August 2009 (Great Sand Dunes and Anasazi sites)
Yellowstone and southern Montana mines - May 2009
China - Summer 2008 (Beijing + Henan)
Costa Rica - Winter 2007-2008 (volcano and beach tour)
Adirondacks - Autumn 2007
Adirondacks - Autumn 2006
China - Summer 2005 (Beijing)
Adirondacks - Autumn 2005
China - Summer 2004 (Beijing and Inner Mongolia)
Adirondacks - Autumn 2004
Adirondacks - Spring 2002
Adirondacks - Spring 2000
GSA meetings
Denver, Colorado - November 2010
Portland, Oregon - October 2009
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - March 2006
Salt Lake City, Utah - October 2005
Washington, D.C. - March 2004
Seattle, Washington - November 2003
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - March 2003
Denver, Colorado - November 2001
Reno, Nevada - November 2000

Undergraduate Research - an important part of education

photo of two studnets using a GPs with electronic range finder and compass. The GPS antena sticks up about seven feet in the air atop a tripod-mounted pole.I am a strong advocate of using undergraduate research projects to help students pull together the knowledge they learn in their many classes.  Earning a degree in geology requires students to take a whole bunch of very different science courses, ranging from classes on how volcanoes erupt, to how beaches erode, to how earthquake vibrations travel through the earth, to fossil identification, and much, much more.  Unfortunately, in spite of every professor's attempts to tie what students learn in each class to the subject at hand, the links between these subjects commonly just shows up as a line or two in a notebook. DOING research requires a person to pull this knowledge together to solve a problem really helps build a strong fabric of knowledge gained in all of those science classes.
Because research pursues the answers to questions with no pat answer, research projects also teach students that there is not always a single, obvious, correct answer to a given problem, and research successes help build each student's self confidence.  Students doing independent research with me work on projects including:

A nice four-year plan for any undergraduate student (by the Career Services Staff at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania)

My advice for students who are not doing well in college 


Kutztown University logo - click here to go to the Kutztown University Geology Program website that I created
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