Scientific uncertainty and global warming part of Dilemmas
Climate change is the major environmental issue facing all inhabitants of spaceship Earth. As Earth science educators, we must inform students about the scientific consensus on global warming and projections of future warming through this century. Recent research has resulted in a dramatic advance in our understanding of climate history.

Water Conservation versus Ecosystem Preservation part of Dilemmas
Nearly all of the water in the Colorado River system is removed for agricultural, industrial, and residential uses before it reaches the mouth of the river. However, the water delivery system in southern Arizona and California has a number of leaks (mostly seepage through the bottom of unlined canals), by which some of the water moves through the subsurface and back into the lower reaches of the river, sustaining a limited ecosystem in the Colorado River Delta.

Karl the Tree Hugger part of Dilemmas
Karl has been assigned to you as an advisee, and you have never met him and have no information on him other than what the registrar shares. He is obviously smart (he received a "5" on the AP Environmental Science exam). He has made an appointment with you to discuss a program of study.

Avoiding hopeless paralysis part of Dilemmas
In an intro class, I wanted to engage students and show them the importance of the field of geology in their lives. So I presented the evidence for an imminent peak in world oil production and explained how oil forms, how long that takes and how difficult it is to find. I followed the bad news with some good news about research into energy efficiency and alternative energy sources. I assigned the students to write minute-papers at the end of class about this lecture.

Al's bandwagon part of Dilemmas
In the eight person seminar class is an inquisitive, nontraditional, student who is a motivated popular science reader. This student challenges the conclusions made by the vocal majority of scientists that global warming is caused by human activity.

Mineralogy Motivation - A Real-Life Tale of Woe part of Dilemmas
I teach mineralogy (do you feel my pain?). Mineralogy has a reputation for being a "weed out" course, and not very many students look forward to taking this class. But in addition, in our department I've encountered another problem: we have a degree option in paleontology, and students who self-select this option basically want to be Jack Horner and head out to the hills to dig up dinosaur bones.

The Legacy of "We've always done it this way" part of Dilemmas
Joe recently completed his PhD and has landed a tenure track faculty position in the geology department at "Research U" for the fall semester. Joe will be teaching a large introduction to physical geology course in the spring. Research U has a variety of resources to help Joe develop his course and integrate the "affective domain," active learning, "clickers," etc. into his teaching. However, the department has a strong emphasis on research and views innovative teaching as not a priority. While in graduate school, Joe TAed both lower level introductory lectures and an upper level lab class, but received no formal training in teaching and was encouraged by his research advisor "just get by teaching."

Meteorology Professor Bob part of Dilemmas
In an upper-level meteorology class, Meteorology Professor Bob introduces complex equations including calculus. A growing body of students strongly resist using mathematical skills that should have been mastered in the prerequisite mathematics courses. The instructor explains the context and necessity of these equations for understanding meteorology at the upper-division level. A common statement of students is: "I don't do math." Students insist they love meteorology but dislike math and lobby the department head for a graphical approach without the use of equations.

Recruiting Under-represented Minorities into a Geoscience Program part of Dilemmas
Students of under-represented groups have little to no interest in the Svalbard REU program. Despite concerted recruitment efforts, members of under-represented groups often don't apply to the program. We use direct mailings (with recruitment posters) and presentations, advertisement at national meetings with minimal success. We can not seem to be able to place this paid opportunity on their "radar-screen."

Age of the earth and relationship to belief systems part of Dilemmas
In order to fully understand Earth processes such as plate tectonics, mountain building, erosion, evolution, and various time scales of global climate change students must have a firm grasp of geologic time and the age of the Earth. Mary is a student in science class for teachers. In a reflective writing assignment Mary reported that she did not believe that the Earth was 4.6 billion years old and constructed a list of young earth arguments that indicate an age of ~6,000 years.