Kurt
Friehauf - TeachingKurt
Friehauf - TeachingWe are all partners
in a quest.
The essential
questions have no answers.
Questions unite people.
Answers divide them.
Elie Wiesel - 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
 Mineralogy How to identify minerals and the chemistry of how minerals form (photo: Sterling Hill zinc mine) |
 Optical Mineralogy Using microscopes to study mineralogy and applying a little mineral chemistry to deduce geological processes (photo: Nyco wollastonite mine) |
 Igneous/Metamorphic Petrology Studying the origins of rocks that form by cooling of hot magmas/lavas (igneous rocks) and rocks that form by recrystallization and chemical reaction at high temperature and pressure (metamorphic rocks) (photo: Adirondack Mnts.) |
 Geology of National Parks The stories of the rocks that you walk on when you go on vacation (photo: Canyon de Chelly, AZ) |
 Environmental Geology Geology related to environmental science with an emphasis on practical experience in the field (photo: soil sampling near Palmerton, PA) |
 Hydrogeology Geology related to environmental science with an emphasis on practical experience in the field (photo: bailing from monitoring well) |
 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) |
 Physical Geology and Intro to Geology Survey of the geological sciences for science and non-science majors, respectively (photo: viewing kiln at cement plant) |
 Structural Geology 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) (now taught by Dr. Sarah Tindall) |
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.
