Team and Institutional Context

Cheryl Emerson Resnick

Cheryl proudly continues the long-standing tradition at ICC of teaching an introductory level geology field studies course for non-majors, alternating between the Southwest and the Rocky Mountain region. Cheryl's background as a National Park Service ranger-naturalist at Grand Canyon National Park and in Utah sparked her interest in teaching geology at community colleges. Having taught for 23 years at ICC, she is looking for ways to improve lab instruction for her geology students.

Courses

Cheryl teaches Physical Geology, Earth System Science, and Geology field study courses (Southwest and Rocky Mountains).

David Voorhees

David has been teaching geosciences full time at Waubonsee Community College since 2002. He is passionate about bringing to his students an understanding of the Earth and the geosciences, and experiments with different pedagogies to engage his typical general education student. He is an active advocate for the 2YC geoscience community through participation in many committees and is a past President of the Geo2YC division of NAGT. More information can be found at http://www.waubonsee.edu/faculty/dvoorhees/index.html.

Courses

David teaches Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Survey of Earth Science (Face-to-face and online), Environmental Geology, Astronomy (Face-to-face and online), and Geology of the National Parks.


Administrative Involvement

Illinois Central College

  • Joe Bergman, Dean of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering (2016-2019)

Waubonsee Community College

  • Mary Edith Butler, Dean For Mathematics and Sciences, Waubonsee Community College (2016-2019)

Institutional Context

Jump to: Illinois Central College | Waubonsee Community College

Illinois Central College

Institution: Illinois Central College serves about 11,000 students across its four campuses in Peoria, Illinois. Fifty-five percent of students are women and nearly two thirds of all students are part-time.

Geoscience program: The geoscience program at Illinois Central College is comprised of three full-time faculty, two with degrees in geology and one with a degree in meteorology. In addition, the program currently has two adjunct faculty. The geoscience program is housed in the Math/Science/Engineering Department. There is a lab coordinator for the entire department with student workers who help maintain lab materials for geoscience, chemistry, biology, physics, and engineering. Since this is the largest department on campus, one of the faculty in each discipline is designated as a teaching chair who is responsible for schedules, class assignments, adjunct evaluations, and textbooks.

The geoscience program offers courses in Physical Geology, Meteorology, Earth System Science, and introductory field study courses to the Southwest U.S. and Rocky Mountain regions. In addition, Energy & the Environment is assigned to Physical Sciences, as is Astronomy. The Energy & Environment course is taught by a geoscience colleague so it incorporates many of the Earth Systems Science topic areas.

Approximately 400 students enroll in the face-to-face Earth science survey course each year, 25-40 students in Meteorology (online), and 20 students in the field course. Most of the students in these classes are non-majors seeking science credit to transfer or graduate. ICC has 1-5 geology majors each year.

Waubonsee Community College

Institution: Waubonsee Community College is a two-year college in north-central Illinois with four campuses centered in Sugar Grove. It enrolls about 14,000 students, 56% of whom are women. It is a designated Hispanic Serving Institution with 35% of the students identifying as Hispanic or Latino. Five percent of the students receive services through the office of disability services.

Geoscience program: There are 3 full-time geoscience instructors at Waubonsee, each teaching the Survey of Earth Science course as well as courses in their respective specialties of geology, meteorology and geography. In addition, Waubonsee has seven adjunct instructors in the geosciences. The program offers courses in Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Ocean Science, Meteorology, Geography, Earth System Science, Introduction to Climate, GIS, Environmental Geology, and Geology of the National Parks.

The geoscience program at Waubonsee Community College is within the Mathematics and Sciences Division. More information about the geoscience program at Waubonsee can be found at the Earth Science program website.

Most of the 600 students taking geoscience classes each semester, especially Survey of Earth Science, are general education students who enroll for the physical science requirement for the Associates degree. Of those, typically 3 to 6 are geology 'majors'.

Institutional demographic data is from IPEDS, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, U.S. Department of Education, typically for the 2014-15 year as available.